Bitcoin Forum

Howdy,
I've been using one for a couple months now and it's given no reason to mistrust it. But it seems weird to me sending my money to an intermediary that's neither a wallet nor a bank and is entirely online. Feels like the money is hanging out in some nowhere zone that isn't completely under my control...

Dies any one else feel this way or do I just not understand this stuff well enough yet?

Thanks!

Depends on which exchange you are using. I generally do not trust exchanges. They can be hacked at any time. Your money is not safe there. Do small trades and withdraw all your cryptos to your own wallet as often as possible.

You feel like the money is hanging out in some nowhere zone because it is  :D Never leave you bitcoin on exchanges for longer than you need to it is not safe to not control your own bitcoin there is a saying if you don't control the private key you don't own bitcoin and that is true. Any minute they could up and leave and what could you do?

If they have a good reputation then yes you can trust them to trade. But you have to remember they hold a lot of btc so they are targets.

I personally would use cold storage not a exchange for long term holding.  Many good exchanges have lost money from security flaws.

You should never trust anyone but yourself to look after your BTC.
Although a lot of people use exchanges daily i wouldn't recomend keeping any amount of btc there for too long, just look at the history bitcoin exchanges have with hacks and others that just run off with everybodys cash.

Bitstamp got hacked to the tune of about 5million of btc a few months back, they did the right thing though and paid everybody back, i think everybody.
Long story short, only keep what you can afford to loose on any exchange.

Wise thing is don't put your bitcoin on exchange for long time period. Exchange just for trading, if you done trading there, withdraw it immediately to your personal wallet. If you have fiat money there, cash it too.
Many hack attempt happen to bitcoin exchange, and sometimes it is successful. Like mt.gox and bitstamp case, big exchange mean many hacker will try to attack it.

your feeling is quite right, i feel the same way too. but unfortunately there is no better way, and we have to take this risk if we want to do trading in exchangers.
just try to pick a well known exchanger, this way the risks will be reduced not eliminated.
the most recent hack of an exchanger that i was a user of was bter.com you can search to see the victims :(

They are targets but it is not usually from hackers it is usually from the guys who are working on the exchange, i would wager it is very rare for someone to be able to hack an exchange but it is not so rare some exchange owner 'pretending' to have been hacked..

Nice and easy it wasn't me we was hacked! (lol)

Then pay my money for 'your' security breach but they don't do they with an exception of stamp recently and bter when the NXT coin was hacked but not often like bter this time with the btc.  :-\

It is the same for early users of online shopping with credit card and users of paypal. You will get used to the feeling of sending money to the abyss after you have done it a few times.  :D

Thanks for the replies guys. I kind of figured it was one of those uncomfortable necessities you have to accept as part if the process. And yeah, I always hurried to get my money out of there.

I don't suppose there are any real-world banks/institutions that allow you to do a direct transfer from bank account/cash to wallet and vice versa? Or like an ATM?

big exchange are usually trustable(but sometimes they are hacked lkike bitstamp, they are not immune to that), better to stay away from unknown one

you can try coinimal, they don't hold your money, so you don't need to trust nothing

I use shapeshift, some say it's trusted. Is it?.. I mean has it ever been hacked?

all exchanges are not scam....there are a lot of exchanges which you can trust..but don't trust blindly because we never know what will happen next

I'm using OKCoin to trade small amount of Bitcoin from time to time. Most of the reputed exchangers is good. However, like what jbrnt said, trade small amount and than send your fiat to bank or Bitcoin to wallet as soon as possible.

Yes you can trust. But don't store your asset there. Use only for exchange. Most all exchanger is have a problem with their security.

Well that's exactly what it is and what you are doing. You have to put your trust in these companies when you use them but that doesn't mean you should. If you don't own your private keys then you are relying on that third party to keep them safe from you and this is how a lot of people lose their money. If you're not comfortable using them you should take your money from them but if you want to use certain services sometimes you have to have a little faith but that choice is yours.

there is no other way if you want to exchange your bitcoin you must trust exchange you choose except you only hold your BTC that is no need to exchange but don't be worry almost every exchange have good reputation and 100% can be trust but,if you still in doubt you can choose big exchange
which has a market volume higher that 500 BTC for 24 hours trading

I do trust some of them to a certain extent, like Bitstamp and BTC-E, but not enough to leave coins there. However I do have a fiat balance there.

After all the hacking drama it gives me a piece of mind that my coins are under my control.

Since you're not own private key...then you're put the risk to the bitcoin if you place it on exchanger.
I think you already knew some exchange that had closed or runaway , example : mintpal ( once it was the most safe exchange & well known ) , Bter ( biggest chinese exchanger (CMIIW) , sharex , etc.

To be honest , I'm still save my altcoin on Poloniex and Bittrex ( those exchanger still exist) but I'm aware they might get away or being shut down.
Just don't save more than you can afford to lose.

You can't - ever. Only use them for the minimum time required, then transfer the Bitcoins back to your wallet.

Yeah we all get that felling at a point in time, these days you cant be too sure, but trust me good background check before initiating any deal or exchange helps alot.

Depends on which exchange want to use, always look where it has more volume of Bitcoin and quantity of altcoins . Also look not robbed the cold wallet as one well-known past him recently.

Greetings.

If you don't care about privacy too much I'd recommend Bitstamp. I've used them since 2013 and have never had any problems with them. The support is also very helpful.
It already got hacked once and has paid back everyone. Just remember don't keep too much money on it. Any money, that is on an address to which you do not own the private keys, is not your money.

Bitcoin is built up on trust. You need to trust everything in the Bitcoin world what is not decentralized! So actually you can only trust the network, because it will (actually) never fail.

you can trust it for a while, when you trade there
after your trade finish, don't trust it anymore :P
so you must withdraw your balance to your personal and private wallet

i do trust kraken as it never have dissapointed me so far. but we all know it is better to store your coins offline for obvious reasons. better safe than sorry.

I don't think you can trust anybody these days. Best to be cautiousness. You should see the example of Egopay in front of us. Trusted and this and that and still ran away with people's money.

you can trust only the legit exchanges, bitstamp is recommended, they never fail.

Not at all. You should use exchanges only for single exchanges and after you have done your exchange immediately withdraw your coins to a secure wallet. Everything else is a dance onto a razor blade, literally spoken  8)

You seem to contradict yourself, but I think you made your point.

I trade in moderate size transactions but never leave them on exchanges for more than a couple of hours.  Then if I want to trade BTC for fiat I use Coinbase to wire it straight into my bank account.

Do you trust banks? Do you trust your friends? Do you trust the man on the street? Do you trust Bill Gates? Do you trust Bernie Madoff? Do you trust Mt. Gox? All exchanges are different - some are trustworthy and some won't be but they could always appear trust worthy then scam later on or get hacked.

You are correct to be cautious.  As many old timers point out, if you don't control the private keys to your bitcoin you don't own your bitcoin.

Having said that, I do keep a small amount of bitcoin on exchanges so I can trade on short notice, but you have to realize that it can all be gone in a blink of an eye.  Vircurex was one of the early exchanges and while it is still around it lost lots of users coins including some of mine.  So only keep coins on an exchange you are willing to lose, because there is a good chance you will until bitcoin becomes a lot more professional.

Good Luck!

Absolutely right to feel kind of 'awkward', you have good senses.  If your going to use an exchange try to stick with the more reputable (i.e. well known ones), bitstamp, btcchina, coindesk, etc.  but as others have already mentioned, don't keep any of your long-term bitcoin savings on an exchange.  Your basically trusting the keys to your crypto-wealth to another party when you do and any number of things can obviously go wrong in that scenario.

Many exchanges were legit before they were shutdown. And your claim about Bitstamp being resistant to failures is false[1]. No exchanges can be trusted well enough. Just take precautions such as depositing only when you want to trade.

[1] http://www.coindesk.com/analysis-bitstamp-hacker-stolen-additional-1-75-million/

I usually use BTC-e for buy - sell BTC, to buy - sell other forks and altcoins I usually use cryptsy.com

yes you can trust them but not blondly because there is nothing in this world 100% risk free

Exchanges control the private keys so you are correct. There is a risk involved. It's similar to an online wallet where you do not own the private keys. You should verify the exchange is legit.

Many exchanges scammed people by closing their services but there are some genuine exchanges also.

Was Mt. Gox the biggest scam in exchanges? I think it got a lot of press release but I heard some things about other exchanges.

Yes, in fact it was the biggest scam ever, about 850,000BTC were lost. This was mainly due to the fact that it had highest trading volume at time before hack and many people used it as a wallet too.

Part of it was Mt. Gox always had a higher price for BTC.  It attracted many people from that and with it's name becoming very common, and the most popular exchange at the time.

At this point I still stick with my thought of no exchange should be long term storage.  It should be used to exchange alt to btc, maybe fiat to btc, or opposites, but never as a device to store your coins.  Look into cold storage and make your life better.

It's definitely a shot in the dark if you aren't dealing with a reputable/responsible and well funded exchange. For instance, it is known that Coinbase is pretty much the most capitalized company in the space aside from 21, and it can be expected that their security practices would be par-none. For the most part, it's tough to know how secure the other large exchanges are.

As good practice, it's probably best not to keep your coins sitting on any exchange for a long time.

Yes you can trust btc exchange
I believe exchange on bittrex and bitstamb

Mt gox was pretty trusted among many people too. Since coinbase only operates in US and there are some people who aren't from US, it isn't a good choice. Your best choice is to choose an exchange which has a proof of solvency audit available for you to review. It should however only be used for references and shouldn't make the exchange automatically trusted. Audits can be unreliable as time passes though.

I wouldn't leave large amounts of BTC on any exchange but I have no problems trusting Bitstamp with 1 Bitcoin. These days I buy all of my BTC from Circle and I sometimes leave some in my wallet there, I think they're also pretty trustworthy. If you're not trading very often however, it would definitely be best if you moved the majority of your coins to a local/online wallet.

I have trusted a few bitcoin on btc-e for well over a year and a couple of hundred dollars, i have made that back already and profit so if you take the risk only take it if you are prepared to lose it because it is only a matter of time before the exchange/s do a runner with everyones funds..

Saying that after all this time i still have the funds on there and they have been safer than in my personal wallets on occasions so even though it feels like you are feeding a blackhole with no return most the time your funds are safe enough lol

Keeping your funds on well-known Bitcoin services with known owners should work.

Xapo and Coinbase do have a Vault option and they are insured like banks.

Coinbase vault is most likely one of the very few exchanges that are ok to store long term.  They did go above and beyond almost all exchanges with their insurance.

If you have to leave it in a exchange  do Coinbase.  But I still say for majority of users best option is cold storage.

Trusting the operators and the security of the exchange are different facets of trust. You can only speculate on the honestly of the operators based on past history and the security of the exchange is always unknown until something happened.  :(

I certainly cannot list all of the exchanges but it doesn't matter. NO You should not trust any exchange , i agree that some are good but what if they get hacked? Keep your btc/fiat in you wallet/bank and just transfer when needed . If you're trading , be sure to get it out after that to keep it safe.
Good luck ;)

Currently I'm using Bittrex for trading Alt coins and BTC-e for trading BTC-USD.
Why I trusted them? Becuase they have very good support I usualy get answer from thier support less than 4 hours.

If I can say  my personal opinion, I will never trust an exchange (or third party service) when we're talking about 'store or save' bitcoin. I am using the various exchange only when I want to '(ex)change' btc for fiat or viceversa and obviously I will not 'stake' by *coin for more than 10-15 minutes.

However, if an exchange with a mutli signature address will be really created (and one of the 3 priv. key for example will be visible I will trust more the exchange).

You can trust any exchange that is listed on Bitcoinwisdom and that has no massive complains in the service discussion subfoum, lik Gox had just before collapsing.

If you want trade btc for altcoins other than Litecoin things might be more complicated

Id trust the exchange what most are using at a certain extent.

You should always remember to have your own sense of judgment of how to protect loss or avoid them. Never hold them in an exchange over long periods is a general thumb, but it really varies based on all the operators.

How they react to support, and what they do to resolve issues.

As a rule of thumb, never use any new exchange, never use any exchange offering you significantly better rates than the popular ones, and always make a google search of "<exchange name> scam" to see if there are valid scam accusations.
You should be pretty safe then.

Last but not least, you should never keep your bitcoin or fiat money on an exchange, unless you are planning to trade actively.

No I do no think, he should not trust (at all) any exchange. He must trust only "himself".




Exactly, also mountain gox was the most used exchange at that time (maybe because it was the unique).

The most trust exchanger I've still use until now, Poloniex ( with a new interface), Bittrex , and Cryptsy. Hope they can still exist forever.
Mintpal suppose to be the best exchanger that compete those exchanger. I'm never expected that it will being shutdown or being hacked...

Trust for what?

-If you are asking just for exchanging and getting your funds back immediately, then you can trust above posters exchanges like poloniex , bitstamp and btce for a very short time duration like 1-2 hours. You are still in danger but very limited one.

-If you are asking for keeping your coins for a long time , you cannot absolutely trust any exchange currently. There is no insurance mechanism for hacked/stolen coins at the exchanges.

Just use fixed-rate Bitcoin exchange which doesn't hold your money and sends you funds right after you pay your order. Our exchange service www.247exchange.com works in this way, so, you don't need to worry about the safety of your funds.

The point is why should you ? Right now, there are exchanges that allows you to trade without having the requirement of a site wallet at all. Try www.100bit.co.in. There exchange commission is extremely competitive too. The only problem you'll face is lack of volume, but I have seen, at least my region people are coming on board. So, why Trust, if you can Trade in a Trustless environment ?

never heard of this exchange before, but the domain is not really enviting to be honest. especially exchanges should have a solid domain extension.

.co.in is a country level domain similar to .co.uk. Even Google runs one of its version on this... www.google.co.in.

i know it's a country level domain. i meant to say it's not really professional as it is a domain hack. for an exchange i would expect it to use a solid domain.

I have read the terms of CoinBase insurance. They are as good as having no insurance. They have got a provision in their term to turn the responsibility of any loss on to the user. Regarding storage, I prefer paper wallet and for regular use blockchain.info. For trading, only direct trading exchanges are the way to go. Those are fast & secured.

Depend which exchanges you choose, you can try search google is he recommended or not.
Or you can try to check here. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=53.0
There's many recommended exchanges here.

Do you have other choice, if you want to trade in the exchange, you have to trust it temporary, may be in the near future, the decentralized exchange will not need your trust.

indeed! :D
but anyways.  there is no other way to exchange coins, except of if you friends r not holding any of it and won't help you with exchange. x) but still. M28MmickT is right xD

never never trust on anything out of your safe wallet, i mean, everything out of your wallet is insecure, hell, even if this is on your wallet will never be 100% secure :P

im not saying to dont use his services, but just be carefully with it and never have lot of your money on them, you know...

Use the exchanges to convert/buy coin.  But use a safe wallet for sure something like a cold wallet.

A exchange even the best could possibly one day be hacked worst case they loss a lot of btc, you don't want to be one of those who lose.  Only trust your own cold storage.

Where are you from ? I thing every country which has a base of people who are interested in bitcoin has few trusty exchanges. Just find them on bitcoin-talk by refferences.

if you want to acquire bitcoin, you need to trust someone, either exchanges or the people you will the coins from.

and exchanges are the only option if you want to trade

There are other options such as using other people like localbitcoin.  But I like exchanges it is safer and lower costs in my mind.  That is assuming you use a good exchange.

Don't keep your BTC on the exchange though.   Move it to a address you control after you get it, this prevents many problems.

If you use localbitcoins you have to trust that the other part won't rob you or double spend or try to scam you

Just use the exchange for trading if you need it or if you have a good time to buy or to sell..after you do the transaction then send your btc to your own wallet not save in the excange it is not secure ( In My Opinion )

I mention this two posts up :).  Use a secure wallet.  Don't use a exchange as a place to hold BTC as a general rule.

Look, if you don't own your private keys, you don't own your money(BTCs). So use the exchanges only for the trades and then get you money out of there. Trust me, many have gone down. And 2 times I was couple of hours from losing my money on the exchanges, the last time this was with BTER, when I withdrew an evening before they apparently got hacked.

My advise is that you shouldn't

look what happened with mtgox, it was the biggest and many people lost their bitcoins, I have lost in exchanges too


So, just avoid having big amounts in exchanges unless it is necessary

Just buy and sell on good exchanges. I have tried coinomat, and it is really simple and safe, you can get there by my signature.

You're right. The money that are not in your wallet (whatever they are) are not under your control. But the exchanges are necessary to fulfill your needs. Without those your money maybe cannot be used. So the question is not if we need to use those but how we will use those. My advice is to leave the money on those as less as possible. There are exchanges that gives profits to leave money on those. But I will not suggest this. Do the change and take your money. then another way the same thing when you will have need.

Agree in full with this. I can give an example about this suggestion. Time ago I made change at bter. Changed dogecoin with bitcoin. In those times I mine dogecoin with a cloud mining and had big profits in dogecoin everyday. So I changed dogecoin in bitcoin everyday. Bter gave (I don't know now) profits if you leave coins in its site. I never did this. One day bter was hacked. What happened to my coins if I would leaved those at the bter account? The answer is simple. Buy, buy coins....

I do trust some of them to a certain extent, like poloniex and bittrex

If I were you, I would never put even satoshis in my account with any reason.
Just trade, redeem and let your coins sit in your account instead of fearing to lose them all at once, as many exchanges got hacked so never trust them to store your coins there.

As far as i am concerned i park my funds in 4 exchanges n till date i find it safe..

Polo, bittrex, yobit & C-cex.. i have joined Empo Ex today n hoping for a good ride there too :)

you cannot trust any centralized exchange. fortunately, some are working on the centralized part. https://bitshares.org/blog/2015/06/16/danish-firm-set-to-revolutionize-cryptocurrency-industry/ Exchange CCEDK for example, they will move to a decentralized model soon

Well you can but it depends on the reputation of the site
Personally I store my btc on a local exchange site, I trust them cuz I've visited once their company

It's always a question of faith...
But today you can find trusted digital currency exchanges. I've always used Bitstamp and Kraken and never had any problems.
So... in a way, It is safe to tell you that these 2 exchanges can be trusted.

Not really, I put minimal trust in exchanges. Even using well established sites like btc-e and cryptsy is risky imho, especially if you're intending to keep substantial amounts of btc on them. I've always exchanged currencies and then immediately withdraw funds to my own wallets.

Just buy and sell on good exchanges. I have tried coinomat, and it is really simple and safe, you can get there by my signature.

Yes! That's a good advice.:)

nice,i just wondering about it
Could you make a review for me about coinomat,and may i know do you used the debit card?

Exchange what you have to exchange and withdraw all your bitcoin.
But sometimes we want to trade more and more and time by time it gets risky to hold there.

In February this year there was a huge hack in the bter exchange where were stolen 7,170 BTC around 1.75 Million Dollar

It is always risky to hold your funds in exchange, even if it is large or small amount of BTC :(

Source: http://www.coindesk.com/bter-bitcoin-stolen-cold-wallet-hack/

Depends on which exchange want to use

As of now, large bitcoin exchanges built their business model based on trust. Regardless if they use multisig or technologies of such fashion I think that whenever there's fiat involved in an online transaction you're relying on other parties so trust is vital. However, if the exchange has been handling a lot of trades without issues for a long time then I think they can be trusted. Still, you should leave your funds with them for the minimum period of time.

Maybe you can trust them but for your own safety you shouldnt do that.

Do you remember Mintpal. It was one of the biggest exchange, until this happend:
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/mintpals-3700-stolen-bitcoin-likely-in-hands-of-alleged-scammer-alex-green/ (https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/mintpals-3700-stolen-bitcoin-likely-in-hands-of-alleged-scammer-alex-green/)

Lot's of people lost a lot of BTC. So just use a exchange to exchange your coins and withdraw them immediately.

Well this is because we do not have all control over the wallet in the exchanger, but if it wants to keep in the exchangertry intalling 2FA and other security features

I know exactly what you mean, I'm never really comfortable leaving my coins on exchanges. However over time, I've come to trust a couple that I feel are safe enough (for me), Bitstamp for Bitcoin and Bittrex for altcoins. It's just too much hassle to have to move coins to and from wallets if you trade everyday. Plus it is possible that you miss price spikes and buying opportunities if you have to wait for coins sent from your wallet to confirm.

It sounds like a hassle, but its worth it for being safe if you plan to trade everyday.

Good habits, always tends to pay off. But, I dont usually leave coins exchange either, its like expecting your friend to pay you back a hit or miss.

When you send your money in this case bitcoins you will not have control of it?

The 2 factor authentication has nothing to do in this case because doesn't stop the exchange owner to take your money.

But it is a security factor to prevent other users to access your account. Good luck.

Well for the people trading, this is just considered as an additional risk on the top of the risk of trading, a risk that the exchange can go bust and you can lose all your coins. When you take a look at all of the exchanges that were hacked and where people have lost their coins in the last 2 years, it's hard to dodge a bullet and not get caught in one hack.

So the best is to withdraw your coins or not trade at all. I know it's a hassle and honestly after some time, you get tired of it and stop trading all together, at least I did.

yes you can trust when there is no other options in your hand but I won't until I get the full controls on my coins that means having a private key

Can you suggest an exchange that they give you the private key?
Until now i haven't seen at least one exchange?
Some that i had experience are Cryptsy, bter, YoBit, poloniex and they dont give you access to private key

I definetely don't trust any exchanger service, because mostly their not give a private key. What an exchanger which can give you a private key?

exchanges will probably never give us a private key as our deposited coins directly get sent to several wallets in a mixing process and eventually end up in their cold or hot wallets.

That's how the exchanges work, our bitcoin goes to their wallet
And in their web app we "play" with numbers to exchange coins from one to other.
Then when we make the withdrawal request the bitcoin comes from their hot wallet, there is no room to trust your money in exchanges.

Only use them for the minimum time required, then transfer the Bitcoins back to your wallet.

you can definitely use one that do not hold your coins, like coinimal, there is an auto conversion buil in like circle, so basically your money are directly send to the recipient without sitting there
this can avoid being scammed but them or hacker, very convenient

you can trust some Big Exchanger
but don't save big amount at exchanger for long time

How I haven't heard before for this exchange? it seems interesting
Also ATM in Australia, so many good features will join now and experimenting with it.
If you have any referral link send me in PM( i think is allowed ) so i can help you as a gift :)

how about MT Gox,,
can you trust them? mt gox is big exchanger, but for now? he scammed everyone
many member will not guarantee an exchanger not be scam

how about MT Gox,,
can you trust them? mt gox is big exchanger, but for now? he scammed everyone
many member will not guarantee an exchanger not be scam

and how about bitcoin price without big exchanger ?

For me I can trust any famous exchange site which has instant payout and with good feedbacks

me too im trust some bigger exchanger like bittrex, poloniex, also yobit

One day, no matter what, regardless of trust, the exchange will close or the site will go down

Always understand this if you keep your $/BTC/alts on such a site  ;D

Poloniex and bittrex yes, but I don't think yobit is a big exchange!!! You can see the volume of the popular coins.
Btc/usd volume 0.1, - this is not big, there are some other coins that have the volume of max 9.7BTC (Vec coin)
Nothing against them i use them too but in low volume and the deposit/withdrawal is faster than poloniex.

you can trust Cryptsy. I mine scrypt on Multipool as well and exchange them on Cryptsy.

Love Cryptsy or hate Cryptsy, they have been around for a long time.

You're correct, YoBit is a very small exchange right now, but good for new coins being released...good to see some coins flourish there (and other scamcoins perish)  ;D

I do not say "big exchanger" always making scam, but at least do not make exchnager great degree of trust.

That depends from the exchanges. There are exchanges that had testify their seriousness and deserve faith. There are to many years of their activity and to many people that interact with those. With them you can act without problems. If then you go to others with dubious reputation you go there at yours own risk.

If you understand the term "exchange" then you should understand the purpose of it, trade/exchange what you have and leave.

Exchange is only good for one thing in my opinion. Got there buy your coins and leave! No bigger chunk of fiat money or cryptos should be placed there for a longer time!

No one are discussing this. The concern of the author of the thread is the trust to exchanges and not to leave the money there. He doubt the process of exchange and not to speak to leave the money there....

Even if that exchange is seems legit but can't guarantee that exchange can be last forever. For example: mintpal incident , ShareX , etc taught me bad experience for not to keep thr fund on exhanger. When the site is shutting down, you've already too late

I have few bitcoins in the bter exchange and there are for more than 6 months
This exchange has been hacked in February this year and my bitcoin disappear from there.
So every 2-3month they try to cover and pay us a very little percentage until they pay the total amount of lost bitcoins.
So there is no trust in exchanges, even though bter had 7,170 btc in their "cold" wallet

there is a saying if you don't control the private key you don't own bitcoin

same aplies to gold, always always remember the goldrule, it applies to all:

if it's not in your hands, it's not yours.

etch it on your brain :)

Exactly. And I am sure that you will never again leave your coins on the exchanges after the BTER bust. People always think that it won't happen to them, but s**t happens to everybody.

You see, I have missed that BTER hack, very luckily. This was a main NXT exchange and I was trading for over 18 months on BTER. I loved trading NXT since it had strong fundamentals so I always knew that the value won't drop to 0, which is the most important thing when you are trading any alt. A night before hack, I have withdrawn 2 BTCs from BTER. Next morning, when I saw that the site is unavailable and when I realized that they are hacked, I have felt like I lost these 2 BTCs. I was very lucky. After this, I decided not to trade anymore. It was just not worth anymore. And I was happy since I just "earned" 2 BTCs that I didn't lose in the hack.

I just wasn't unlucky that morning because i had open orders and i slept
I was selling my doge for btc, so i left the pc and slept until next morning i didn't know if i sold or not
So after a day or two i understood that btc were stolen, and after re-activation of the website i understood that i had gotten btc by selling doge and that hurts. So no more leaving in exchange but it can happen everytime.

Now I understand this and doing because 2 time big scams hit me and I lost big amount which was heartbreaking for me but now I am doing only exchange and leaving them

May i know for which big scams are talking about? Being scammed is the most terrible feeling, but recovering makes you more stronger

You need to trust eventually. But not for a long time (for speaking of exchanges).
There were lots of robbery under the name of "we've been hacked" etc.

Yes, you were also unlucky that your order has gone through before the alleged hack. If you stayed in Doge, it would be possible for you to withdraw it some time after when they reopened the exchange.

But in all honesty, who knows what happened. Maybe they have manually made all orders go through, in that way they pumped up the BTC amount that they stole. Since I strongly believe that this hack was an inside job and nothing else. Oh well..

Correct, i made an order to sell doge to a very high price because i went to sleep,
and i think it was pumped so hard to get as much bitcoin as possible and steal all of them
And hacking a cold wallet is really hard and it can be done 99% from their employees

If you wanna use exchange then I suggest use one in your country of recidency. It's much easyer then exchange internationally.

What if in my country there are no local exchange for bitcoin? I should search internationally. And the trust depends on exchange

you can trust only big exchangers but not for big amounts .. i would recommand you using localbitcoins when you want to sell/buy BTC it will work faster

First cryptorush and then Mintpal almost kill me because I have very big shock in Mintpal I was thinking may be they give something back but they are out of front and then bter is also they are giving back but support is very bad and withdraws are more bad

You can never trust another entity 100% with your money. that might be due to personal greed or because of something out of their control code cock up or hacking for example only you can be trsuted 100% precent

I used to use coinbases wallet for storing all my bitcoin and never had a problem a lot of people just over hype the risks

well, a lot of bitcoin users have done the same thing in coinbase or any other exchanger and never had any problems like you. but at the same time a lot of others had encountered some problems.
i mean it is not "over hype", you always have to be careful what service you use and never use it with large amounts if you are afraid of losing it. you are trusting a third party after all.
you can do a little search to find out the issues that users had over the years with different exchangers.

there is no problem yes, for now. but hopefully there wont come a time that you break any rules againsts their ToS of your account will be banned and lost yours coins

I suppose that depends on the level of risk that you take. The problem, of course, is the "central point of failure" issue. Remember, many, many people were using MT Gox in a similar manner as you -- as their primary wallet. Some stored hundreds and hundreds of bitcoins there on a permanent basis (and I'm not talking about traders, some of whom had thousands of coins on there).

IMO, if you're gonna keep your coins with a 3rd party, at least spread your risk around a bit. Don't keep all your eggs in one basket, and all.

The only right answer for the OP question is NOPE.
Today it could be the best exchange in the world, but tomorrow someone very skilled will attack it, and the exchange will fall.

i dont think you can trust the exchanges as they might have problems or be a scam i wouldnt keep my money in exchanges if i were trading anything

After trying some of them out, though the exchanges I used didn't screw me over, I ended up having to wait one or two weeks to get my fiat transfered to my bank account.

The only truly reliable alternative I've found is to go directly to an office (in my case the Bitcoin Embassy in Montreal) and do the exchange in person. That way I get my money right away and I don't have to stress out about the online exchange not having enough liquidity or being hacked while the money is being transfered.

Glad that i didn't hear about that before, i know that feeling of being scammed so let's hope these current exchange doesn't scam, even though there is a scam report for cryptsy.

some exchenge are good enough to keep your coins,and i was trust poloniex and bittrex. but you have found a big fee and minimum withdraw.

I know it is pretty hard to trust any exchange site as it can be hacked and I lose my deposits but we have to deal with these sites so I prefer instant withdraw sites only

It depends on exchange site that you are using. There's a exchanger that you can actually trust for your money.

Which exchange do you trust then? It is an open scam accusation for Crypsy exchange, if you are using it try to withdraw your bitcoin.

Of course you can, but all depends of how much you want to exchange, because they take like 20% of feeds. but ill recommend you to go to localbitcoin forum, and find someone who can sell you bitcoins in person, is the best way and secure :D. Good luck!

Trust no one in Bitcoin industry, both services and individuals.
Never do business without escrow.
Never save your money in exchanges. Only put your money/btc when you want to trade and withdraw immediately when your trade is finished.

Well said if we are strict in these steps then our bitcoin is safe enough :)

indeed. Even if a exchange or online wallet looks safe there us always a change for a hack.

Even the offline wallet was hacked, if you have heard for brainwallet then you should think twice :)

Actually, it'd be best to think three times, twice in your head and the third thought kept in a secret location elsewhere...  ;D

You never know if an admin is trustworthy, mark karpeles was trustworthy, the evolution market admins were trustworthy, Mintpal and etc.

For now, you can use some popular exchanges to do some trading

but I wouldn't rely on/trust them long term because you just don't know what will happen to them.

there are many people's who are trusting a bitcoin exchange for their money I will say that they are just risking their money because I won't keep my money anywhere where I don't have the private key

nowhere is safe, long term, except your QT wallet

i doubt that you can trust them they might easily scam people and steal their bitcoins

When I first became interested in BTC it was immediately apparent to me at least that Gox was a shower of shit and I never went anywhere near it. By their very nature no dark market can be trusted and the Evolution admins were self proclaimed carders.

The only positive that's come out of all these cons and failures is that eventually, just maybe, the average Bitcoiner won't fall for the same old shit over and over again. It still happens every day. My sympathy for future victims is now nil. There's enough precendents out there for them to know better.

The more that an exchange gain trust the more risk is being put in to them. Exchanges are made for short-term and not for long-term standing.

why do you think exchanges aren't supposed to last long? because hacks or inside job thefts? with time the security and the professionality of the exchanges is growing and growing. i do think that the top exchanges can last quite a long time.

Latest exchange many bitcoins were "stolen" by "hackers" and people are just afraid.
It is not a dark market eventhough it is something legit like in real life money exchange.
Also i saw a scam accusation here that is made to Cryptsy exchange so these things are happening real.

It's in the human nature to be corrupt and greedy . Decentralised p2p  platforms will the future since none controls them, only code does. And code isn't corrupt nor greedy.

So we can conclude that we must never save our fund forever on the exchanger except you're ready to loss.
Since we do not know when will exchanger gonna collapse

We need to look back, always learn from experience. Look at Mt.Gox, Mintpal, BitInstant, i'm not judge all bitcoin exchanger is bad, but we need to be more careful with store a money on there. I have bad experience with those btc exchanger.

You can't trust bitcoin exchanges but that doesn't mean everyone will run away with your coins...But yes never use bitcoin exchange as a wallet...Instead only use them to trade and store bitcoins locally,offline storage,paper wallet for best security :)

Well you understood it, the conclusion is that exchange whatever you have and leave.
This is why the exchanges have been made.
But if you are a trader and trade a much then you should think yourself about the risk by putting all your btc in exchange.

it depends of where exchager did you use....dont stay long your money to that exchager.... if you using perfect money or any bitcoin you can exchage trusted site like chenger.com it has 1k plus trust worthly.... and you can withdraw it via bank account.... if you want to know more about exchanger sites go to perfect money.is you can see more changer sites there and youll see trust score....gudluck

Because there is a high risk by the time goes. Because of the inside "thefts", and exchanges should be one step forward in security field. So there is no 100% trust in exchanges.

Before MTGOX collapse this might be a stupid questions. Other than that exchange I have bees scammed by another exchange, after scam only I came to know which was from Nigeria.
There are many trusted exchange. We can believe them and deposit our hard earned bitcoins for exchange or for trading to make good bitcoins.

They're all scammers. But I keep money on btc-e and bitfinex. :P

As long as you don't put ridiculous amounts of money in the exchanges, they they are mostly safe.

Still, I wouldn't use them as my main wallet.

Yes we can definitely can relay on bitcoin exchanges. Because we need to convert our one coins into another for that we need exchanges with out any doubts. So check for credibility of that exchange then trade in them.

But we can't put it for a long time.
Remember ShareX or mintpal exchanger ? Once they are great exchanger and now they're close without being expected.
What happen to the fund that I kept there ? They take all  :(

Remember bter? they were hacked too, but they got back to business, but they are paying users very little amount of lost bitcoins, something like <10% until now.

For now i only trust my local exchange. They have real company, and i know who's the owner.
Beside that they have a commitment to build bitcoin community in my country.

May i know the name of your local exchange.
I see that it is much better to have a local exchange especially when you know the owner.
At my country there is no local exchange neither the community know much about bitcoin lol.

Which country are you from? I also trust my local exchange but we have 3 exchanges, I only trust 1. The one have legal issues and the other has no volume depth.

Like with any business offering to store or manage your assets, ask yourself what happens if they fail ? and how likely they are to fail?

some times i get problem at exchanger
are this make you scares?
huobi offline for some second's
http://img.prntscr.com/img?url=https://i.imgur.com/rRZD9hy.png

money needs exchange even MtGox dying, does not equal bitcoin dying. Not every person who owned bitcoin had bitcoin on MtGox. many people who own bitcoin have never used MtGox.

That is why it is not advisabke to park your money in exchangers since as you've said it yourself it is completely out of your control. The only people who leaves their money there are those who need immediate funds for trading.

It depends. Yes they can be hacked. Everything is "hack-able". What matters here is the relationship that you have with the exchanger that you're using. I use ecoin.eu as my trading platform and they are a partner with an exchanger so it's really comfortable for me to use them. But what I can suggest is that you need to follow your instincts. You can follow other people's vouches/suggestions but it won't guarantee you anything unless you actually try them yourself.

I'm from indonesia. My local exchange is bitcoin.co.id. The owner is Oscar Darmawan.
Bitcoin community is growing fast at my country. Until now registred user in exchange is 75216 member.
Even the volume in not really much compare to other. But i trust this exchange than other.

Wow that is huge exchange with 75,216 members.
Anyway it is far away from me geographically but the service seems to be good.
I wish one big exchange like that in my country soon, but the most important part is that you trust them.

That's really great to know that Bitcoin in your country is growing.However I recommend always to hold bitcoins in adresses where only you hold the private keys for. Only deposit really small amounts at the exchanges. You never know...

Basically, that is the one general rule of thumb for all bitcoin exchanges - whether you trust them or not - just use them to buy or sell bitcoins. Then move your coins off of the exchange. Their purpose is not to be used as a wallet, but as a means to buy or sell bitcoins, period.

Though some people say that BTC remain anonymous to its users but nobody can force the exchange to give out information and, as long as the exchange keeps working, most of its users won't see any harm in this.

why i must upload some document if i want to withdraw my balance with voucer code
anyway i try your local bitcoin exchanger and i like it

well for me.. using bitcoin itself...
needs trusts. even the wallet we are using,
we trust them without knowing even further.
but in same area... some people take advantage of this trust.
and make a scams.. so we still need to be careful.
if i where you.. search for it. and investigate it even further
since your doubting it. goodluck

No, since exchanger will collapse one day but the problem is "when"
I've ever trade and vote on mintpal ( the green theme and best exchanger that ever exist) but one day it got collapsed. Ofcourse that shocked and unexpected news. Luckily I've withdrawn all fund before mintpal shut down forever..

if i remember mintpal collapse, that make me very sad,
that a good exchanger also my 2nd exchanger after i know c-cex

i have some bitcoin maybe 0.01 i know it's not much, but my balance is my first earning from  some faucet  :'(

I use instant BTC exchanges, then I feel more safe  ;) Several months ago, I had one problem with BTC exchange, sent ticket to support and receive reply with problem solved  ;D

If your going to use an exchange site  try to look for the well known  and trusted exchange site websites. Btw, do some research and check their background history.

instant BTC exchanges use very low rate,
the difference between the market rate and instant exchanger exchanges usually up to $ 10

never trust everything on internet. so do bitcoin exchanges except you are know someone who run the exchange
just trust on yourself while you on the line. that's my principle.

I couldn't agree more with this. This is the main purpose we created bitcoinx.io (http://bitcoinx.io), so that each exchange would have a profile ratings and reviews, so that others could see it before making a decision to use that service. Think of Yelp, but for Bitcoin.

Short answer is yes.
Long answer is not so easy.
For the most part most of the larger exchanges (exchanges with volume) are safe to trade on.

There is absolutely no trust in exchanges if you want to leave your bitcoins there for a long time.

Many good exchanges that i personally use are yobit poloniex cryptsy(not recently) and they do their job for what they are.

FUD..
Don't listen to this guy.

I wrote no trust in exchanges if you want don't leave your bitcoins there for a long time.
Because everything can happen you can see the last hack in mt.gox, bter hack etc.
The mtgox hack was one of the terrible story? will millions of lost for users.

I fully agree on first sentence.
However in second sentence you wrote all the untrusted altcoin exchanges. I'd never put my money on Yobit and if I need to use Poloniex and Cryptsy I only deposit when I trade and immediately withdraw new coins.

you need to leave always a small amount of coins for trading, or you may lose the opportunity for a good profit

mtgox was a joke exchange, i'm sure that the more we go ahead the more secure exchange will be

It should be more secure every time, but holding in exchanges your bitcoins for a long time is no reasonable if you do not trade.

I understand that we should hold there if we want to trade but after your do the trade i recommend to leave.

for btc trading i would only use large exchanges like bitfinex, bitstamp, kraken. other small exchanges like poloniex and cryptsy aren't for serious bitcoin trading.

Well i have never been on bitfinex or bitstamp neither kraken,
But i would not consider as a small exchange poloniex neither cryptsy they have pretty large volume of bitcoin and alt coins.
What i consider as a small exchange is YoBit, they have been around 1 year and it is still be beginning but i do trust them for now.

Never keep any coins in an exchange for too long, also if you're trading i wouldn't put your entire bankroll on one exchange.
Seems obvious, though I have known people who do this without thinking about it.

Meh, more or less. I think it's best to trust exchanges with small amounts of BTC for short amounts of time. I would never use an exchange as my personal wallet for incoming and outgoing transactions. I'd only trust the most popular exchanges like Coinbase. Even then, I would still not leave a large amount of BTC on it. You never know what's going to happen, like them locking you out of your account and asking for "verification" or something.

There is absolutely no reason you should need to trust a BTC exchange other than the short period your BTC or fiat money is in the exchange while you're exchanging. If you're keeping a significant amount of cash in the exchange, it's a bad idea. There's a reason you have a Bitcoin wallet, y'know ;)

There have been reputable exchanges that "lost" bitcoins and got away with it. You should always transfer your bitcoins to your own personal wallet after you are done exchanging.

Balls.

If everyone took that advice there'd be some considerably more cheerful people around.

I've never left coins on an exchange and never would. For alts I've used bter, mintpal and yacuna. Guess what would've happened in every single case if I'd left my coins on any of those exchanges?

I think that CryptBid has not understand well my post, glad that you understand :)
To bter for altcoins it is ok but it was/is not ok to send bitcoins there as their "cold" wallet was hacked this February.
There is no trust in exchange as the refund process mostly is not possible or takes years to be fully refunded.

Bter is marginal these days. Node coin users have had transactions stuck for weeks. Support is either not responding or brushing them off. I don't think the bter operators have a great deal of incentive to keep it running properly any more. The damage is done.

I have many bitcoins stucked there, and only a small percentage was refunded.
I was exchanging Doge coin to bitcoin and for a much higher price that was that day but i think the price was pumped and the exchange was "hacked" from any of their employee. It's simple impossible to think that the "cold" wallet 7,000BTC+can be hacked, since then i don't trust exchanges.

I think they admitted that the CEO's email was hacked and it had the same password as the servers. That's possibly more pathetic than an internal theft.

I don't know how their back end server works but it just does not make sense to be stolen 7,100+ bitcoins
Which are worth in millions of dollars, but that was a bad experience. My balance is still on pending hope to be get my money back asap.

Honestly, you should never keep your coins in an exchange. The whole point of Bitcoin is that you don't have to trust anyone with your money.

I totally agree that using exchanges is highly risky, it is much better you use hardware wallet and save everything their where ever you trade save in your desktop wallet. because exchanges can be hacked and then they will not respond and tell that their site is hacked and they cannot help.

I think we've mostly past the worst of the exchange problems akin to mt.gox. The remaining exchanges have a certain level of competitive edge seeing as they are the ones that survived the onslaught.

Early technology much like the internet itself is full of risks and pirates everywhere, but eventually things will improve for the better.

The security is the main part of every new exchange.
It is the most sensitive part and we have seen many hacks that have been made these past few years.
I also don't trust much the current exchange, but i leave on them a small amount to trade in alt coins.

I also have very small amount of bitcoin in more than two exchanges. I do not want to rely on a single exchange as I'm aware of the old popular exchange stories. So, it will some what secure of bitcoins if we have accounts in more than one change and having our bitcoins split ted across many exchanges.

if you not trust exchanger, so how to buy and sell your bitcoin ?

and who will determine the price of bitcoin?

Not everybody use exchanges. There are a lot of Bitcoin trading in OTC.
In exchanges speculators determine the price of Bitcoin, but you don't have to follow their prices. Exhanges are highly manipulative. Yo can see different prices in each exchanges.

Trust no one :(
Watch this:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1203213.msg12635377#msg12635377

Nowadays you can trust them. Bitstamp got hacked and the customers funds were all secured. Today, the industry is settling and giving back confidence to the users. The bitcoin trading industry is a highly competitive industry and the leading exchanges are trying to offer an excellence service.

yeahh i can see different prices in each exchanges.
but no more than 50% and diffirent price still within reasonable limits

If you check the history of the bitcoin exchangers you will be shocked.
In the past few years there had been many hacks that a lot of users were affected.
Personally i lost few btc in exchange by trusting them to exchange alt coin to bitcoin.

yeahh iknow some of that : the biggest scamer "mintpal" , also swisscex, and Biggest Bitcoin exchanger Mt.Gox
im not trust 100% at exchanger because i never hold long time my bitcoin/altcoin at exchanger, i use PC wallet (altcoin) and mycellium wallet (for bitcoin)

It's not all about how long do you keep your bitcoin to an exchange, but if you trust them or not.
In my case it happen in few hours, withdrawed all the earning and sent to the exchanger to exchange into bitcoins.
After few hours the website went down, and after few days i saw in google news that the site has been "hacked" and the bitcoin were stolen from the "cold" wallet. - this was bter.

Some of exchanges sites can be trust, make sure that exchanger site is high trust score you check it in scamadviser.com or you can check here with trust score https://perfectmoney.is/business-partners.html
im sure you will not scam if you think first before you do...

most people know that exchanges have been hacked but there isn't a better alternative for current exchanges at the moment. don't think gemini exchange will change that.

No. Gemini exchange has all the new and latest technically sound protections. But we do not know how strong a new hacker comes against it. Keeping only needed fund in exchange is most advisable.

I know that it is any other alternative, but at least using the most popular and trusted exchanges.
Nowadays i use only few exchanges like yobit and poloniex, rare cryptsy.
Poloniex has good volume of the coin that i trade and yobit has most new alt coins.

It is true that exchanges may get hacked, but it is a hassle to keep 50 wallets. I think that if you use many altcoins an do not have great amounts of money (2 Btc or less perhaps) it might be better to trust some exchange than to have the pain of cold storaging and having so many wallets and backups.

I store some of my coins in exchanges together with my alt coins. I know it's kinda risky but the coins I have there is not really that huge that I can still sleep like a baby if ever that exchange site got hacked (I hope not). It's easy to look at how many coins you have together with some alt coins that I'm collecting.

I use the same method, i have mostly my altcoins in exchange(s)
But i am just waiting the price to raise a bit because most of the alt coins price has been decreased as  the bitcoin price has been increased a bit lately.
I don't store there a big amount because the security is the main thing to trust an exchange.

Not every BTC exchange is already trusted, there is only few exchangers are known here like Yobit, Bit-X, Coinbase..this are trusted and have many positive feedbacks from people, so we can use them for exchange between currencies and Bitcoin

To add to that list i would add also poloniex,
For now it is trusted enough and has good volume of alt coins.
If you have ever heard about bter then stay away from it as people are having issue withdrawing their bitcoins.

I only trade on highly trusted exchange websites rather than those that have good reviews as mostly are fake ones. Localbitcoins is one good website and VirWox is the other one that are safe to trade on but the fees are definitely high. If not these websites, for other currencies I choose the ones recommended by the Payment Processors like Payza has its own exchange website and Perfect Money as well has its own exchange website wherein they charge 2% fee on transactions involving bitcoins. It takes time to get the bitcoins exchange but still it's worth the trust.

Yes, I second your vote for Poloniex. That's definitely one robust exchange. They got into trouble once before when they got hacked. About 12% of their coins have been taken which they deducted from their customer balances and they have repaid every penny in the near future. Since then, they had no problems whatsoever.

Just the way how they solved their previous hack crisis gives me a lot of confidence and trust into them. I would recommend them to anybody. The best altcoin exchange out there.

When happened the last poloniex hack? I consider my self as a new user when i heard this from you.
Since they repaid all of the lost funds then this gives extra trust to them.
Unfortunately bter exchange was hacked in February this year and still they haven't paid their users
Until now they have paid their users only 9.76% of the total bitcoins stolen.

Yes, it was a while ago. 18 months ago. That's an eternity in crypto world. But they have handled it right and 99.9% thus wasn't an inside job, unlike the BTER which was 99.9% an inside job.

Here is an article, you can find many more if you just Google it.

http://www.coindesk.com/poloniex-loses-12-3-bitcoins-latest-bitcoin-exchange-hack/

I think that it is a good idea to have your bitcoin spreadable in many exchanges.
But not in every exchange, personally i have only in 2-3 exchanges and until now it is good except bter which got hacked.
And my funds are still not refilled, in generally you should ask first in which exchange should we use then research yourself.

never

Even this one from the Voss brothers?

Perhaps it depends on what exchange you rely on
That said it does put you at risk even if the exchange is reliable as there is a chance the service gets hacked into and wallets stolen from
So for transactions yes for storage no.

this is still new enough, i would certainly not hold my hope for it, but besides that i would not elave money on any of them no matter how much it's trusted

My biggest concern is not actual hacking of a security glitch or exploit that hackers may take advantage off, the big problem is when a group of people decide to create an exchange, act legit for a couple of weeks and then when you least expect it they play the "we just got hacked" card, so thats why its important to never leave funds inside.

Wise thing is don't put your bitcoin on exchange for long time period.

Exchange just for trading, if you done trading there, withdraw it immediately to your personal wallet.

If you have fiat money there, cash it too.

Many hack attempt happen to bitcoin exchange, and sometimes it is successful. Like mt.gox and bitstamp case, big exchange mean many hacker will try to attack it.

This is the only thing I would trade on exchanges. Alt coins. If they go down due to "We got hacked" ploy then not such a big loss.

I do trust bitcoin exchanges because i need to exchange something.
If i don't trust them, how can i trade something?
At least i should trust for few minutes, but i don't prefer to leave the coins there for a long time, we can't know what will happen.

Well we need to trust at them the biggest and olders ,why if we dont trust how the hell we will exchange our btc with altcoins? trying direct person to person would result into scam attempts very easy soo sure they are trusted and well the best way to protect ours coins.

Yes not all exchanges. but a few which are at the top .. like bittrex and all. you can trust them.

You can trust to only largest BTC exchanges, which are popular in forum - so you can see member suggestion  ;D

if you not trust exchanger
how to sell your bitcoin ? i think exchanger is best place to sell your bitcoin
you can sell 100 200 300 btc or unlimited

Some time its not work as happen to me I was new and deposit all money in Mintpal they was very good and trustworthy but suddenly run and never came back here or any where

Mintpal was sold to a scumbag as far as I know. Just goes to show that you have to stay on top of the information surrounding exchanges too if you choose to trust them, which no one should be doing anyway. Exchanges are run by regular folks. Some of them get bored. Some aren't making any money. Some are made offers they can't refuse.

well you always sell privately in your zone(i would do this if there was someone with unlimited fund) and or on the net, with some very high trusted users and escrow

Mintpal was a fantastic altcoin exchange, but the original owners sold it due to a lot problems and with the fact in mind that they knew holding the exchange was no option as it would fail anyway due to the lack of funds and interest from them. They are also responsible for the damage the new exchange owners have caused. They sold it to anyone, just to get rid of it, witout thinking about the users that had plenty of coins there.

I do miss Mintpal. I have traded quite a lot over there. And the exchange worked flawlessly with the old owners. All of the problems started when  they have sold it as the posters above have written.

It's crazy that at the end, only Poloniex, Btc38 and maybe Bittrex have survived and are still functioning very reliably. All of the other alt coin exchanges are pretty much gone in my opinion or with a lot 9f problems.

Yeah! Mintpal was by far the best altcoin exchange. I remember the huge volumes they had, on some days their 24H volume even went over 10,000BTC. And the coins that were about to get a Mintpal listing were pumped to shit on other exchanges  :D Good old times.

sometimes you can trust but sho sould research that exchange site.

dont keep your money in there

lost 2 btc this way

I would like some percentage of my bitcoin to sell, at these recent peaks and the leave money on the exange.
And buy back when we are all in despair again, which site are recommend?
Sometimes it takes a couple of months before I will buy back.
I will off course set up 2 way authenticator.
Kraken any good?
It needs to be anonymous, and can't withdraw to my personal bank account in the mean time.

can you share your experiences lose 2btc ?
where you lose your bitcoin?

Btc-e ? bitstamp ? bitfinex?

It's to be expected really. I'm sure lots of dreamers decided running an exchange would be a fun and painless idea. They'd quickly realise you need serious commitment to make one work properly and a decent income to justify the time expended.

I suggest to do trades with trusted exchange which is established/registered in your Home Country! The best part is in case of any dispute, you can claim them through your local authorities!

I lost few bitcoins too, when i wanted to exchange doge to bitcoin.
Made an order with a extremely high price then the price was pumped and it was converted to bitcoin.
When i got up i saw the exchange website has gone offline :(, so no trust at all to them.

Well i guess most exchanges had made their profit and the work involved to keep the income were getting bigger ,and well some bugs ,problems,i only use poloniex to manage my principal funds,i know the others but till the moment only poloniex has my trust at the moment.Im not saying the others arent safe ,but im dont need to log in there even having accounts .

The problem that in many countries there is no such established exchangers using Bitcoin, or exchanging it , so in this countries people will need for sure to use the online exchangers, no other choice

what if there are none? i'm forced to go with some abroad exchange, which i think is the case for many here

i think as long as you use famous exchange there will be no problem, just don't let your coins sit there, or convert them to fiat, all exchange should be insured against fiat fraud but not btc

It's either that or they have become very greedy during the time running their exchange by seeing all the funds that they have a control off.

You know, even when people get into exchange business with right intentions, shaking a lot of money in front off their nose changes their honesty quite a lot sometimes.

There is just some good exchanges and reputables businessmans running them ,using new exchanges can turn the new scam history.

Well there is always a risk sending to someone else that you don't know.
Especially to exchanges, as we know there have been many hacks recently.
Personally i use time by time YoBit and until now it is working good.

people get wiser over time and stop using new exchanges that promise you interest rates and such. better stick with existing large exchanges and you'll be fine.

With all the things in the news lately with Cryptsy, why would anybody want to put any trust in exchanges when they have the power to lock your account and ruin off with your money?

i don't think so

i lost around 1 btc when bter hacked.

and right now, after trading, if wanna go around, just WD my coin

it must be said that cryptsy is one of the few exchange tha never got hacked, and they have a nice volume, to they have an overkill security

but it seems that it is working, seeing how they were not violated even once

If just a user can't withdraw his bitcoin then it's ok (not good)
But if the number increases then we can't trust anymore Cryptsy.
Personally i do trust exchanges but only for small amounts and withdraw as soon as possible from there.

Trading is risky always, but in the same time we can't judge every exchange system as not trusted
I think there is some trusted exchange platforms however we have always to take care and choose the safest ones

Bro did you try this changer.com ? i will use it for exchanging my usd to bitcoin or bitcoin to usd.. and its easy to manage it...

True. Cryptsy is out there since a while. And it must be said also that in terms of usability is one of the crappiest exchanges we've ever seen. Maybe vircurex was worst than Cryptsy if someone remembers it.

Hidden whois, check. 'Contact details' consists entirely of one email address, check. That isn't really in the spirit of this thread.

Exchange barely anyone has actually heard of or used, check.

Yeah...I think I'll pass...

Bitstamp is good enough for me.

Yes you right.

You can believe: btc-e, bittrex, cryptsy.

I don't like the word belief: sometimes it implies blind acceptance. We don't have to believe in exchanges: we only need to know that they work.

but you still need to be carefully with your assets

Well i wouldn't so sure about believing these exchanges.
For example we can see here that there are many accusation about cryptsy.
Where they block/disable their users accounts, isn't this the worst situation about trusting or not the exchanges!

Frankly speaking everything could be hacked and exchange is not an exception. But if they would be so unsafe, nobody use them at all. If you need to be 100% sure, make small tradings and then withdraw your money as someone have already told here earlier

I'm keeping a small amount of BTC on BTC-e.com. Risky, I know. I should really get myself a decent wallet incl. password.

In last few days many issues with Cryptsy and btc-e is also never been trusted as they also have many issues in past and in last few days

the security against hacking is nowadays better and financial sites including the exchangers used this security tools usually , it's not easy for hackers to attack this sites currently..always we have just to choose the trusted exchangers because there is a lot of scammers online

It is and you just can't, if you must use one then just go there do your thing and get out and hope that nothing happens for the time you're there, as short as it might be. I don't truly believe the exchanges who were so called got "hacked" in the past, I think it was all a cover up, it was a perfect crime, wait for the moment when there are a lot of public funds and then bam! go offline abruptly with a story that one of our employees did this this.. and we were hacked. And since there are no legal tie ups, sell the bitcoins slowly and then start again.

It is still quite a relevant threat for my exchanges despite using cold storage and hot wallets. Bitstamp was hacked quite recently and it was quite a major one. Hot wallets can be easily compromised by means of social engineering to the servers. Even though hot wallets are much more hackable than cold storage, cold storage can also get compromised if not generated securely.

Of course there is always this risk of hacking the site despite the DDoS security against attacks, because simply hackers develop every day their methods and we can't secure the site hundred per cent. But i think if the site's manager use this security tools it will be safest method and make the hackers work harder

yeah you can trust most of bitcoin exchanges like localbitcoins.com etc. but there are some who may get away scamming coins so stay attached to forum and always get up to date reading posts about in scam accusations if any relates in.

There are good exchanges in the market,
But these good can one day scam their clients as few of them did already in the past.
I have a bad experience with exchanges in the past but we have no other choice to trade and make a little profit.

That's a hell lot of accusation, we know Gox was an inside job like you are saying, but there are also legitimate exchanges that closed entirely due to external factors. Look at MintPal, if it hasn't been bought by the Moolah scammer, it would have been a much more established exchange than Bittrex.

Yes there are various external factors for the failure of most of the bitcoin exchanges. I should not call it failure, it is just shutting down of exchanges. Recently Yacuna is going to close their operations after several months of successful operations for Dogecoin and Clamcoins.

Not Every time you can trust on btc exchange but it is trustable.But this will be quiet beneficial that you will make safe btc in your wallet where it will always be safe.

Our bitcoins are only safe when only we control them.
By sending the bitcoins to somebody else in this case exchanges then they control our bitcoin.
They decide to give us back or not, and some of exchanges has been 'hacked' many times and the clients were mostly affected.

that's why people should never store their coins in exchanges as the risk of a hack or theft is simply too big. best is to only send coins to an exchange if you are willing to sell them. otherwise just keep them offline.