Wow - didn't realize on first reading that the comment was actually directed to Zhou Tong, who replied that he would "definitely pay attention to every single detail." Forensic's response was prophetic: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2976031
EDIT: panarky has now updated his post above to make it clear that the advice was to Zhou Tong.
Thank you for your original advice. It's definitely useful. But it's not relevant today.
I don't wish to link the Bitcoinica fiasco with my leave because I sold Bitcoinica a few months ago. And I lost my control in January. Basically everything didn't go as I planned. (I'm VERY conservative about wallet security.)
I wanted to build an independent exchange system to replace hedging, so that most funds can stay offline. But the new owner didn't like the idea.
I know it failed like predicted, but my involvement in the failure is highly limited. I sold the site for the same reasons: What if someday I'm hacked, or caught? (The valuation (P/E) was less than 1!)
I'm a web developer, not a security expert. I know how to protect the API keys but I'm not good at encrypting a wallet.dat. That's all I thought since day one.
I thought jellicle's advice to Zhou Tong was insightful 248 days ago. Time has proven its wisdom.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2973803
-- systems that work with money are attacked hard and often, by intelligent skilled people
-- in fact some of the people who attack your system are likely to be both more skilled and more intelligent than you are
-- systems that work with money that fail, fail spectacularly ("What do you mean someone withdrew $8 million last night?")
-- banking websites, Paypal, etc. are all like icebergs - you don't see 9/10ths of the things they've done to prevent spectacular failure
-- spectacular failure is your destiny if you don't work very hard to prevent it
-- spectacular failure may be your destiny even if you do work very hard to prevent it
You should plan accordingly.