Bitcoin Forum

Hi,

It becomes more and more clear that the take down of BTC-e is an US government action.
As a victim of the US action taking BTC-e site down, I was wondering if there is already some joint usergroup action taken to get our funds back.
I live in the netherlands and I have about 800 LTC and some BTC there and those are MY coins, they are totally LEGAL.

I think it's wise to setup a group that hires a lawyer to give our demands a voice.
My opinion about the situation is that I understand they want to take down the criminal people, but it can not be so that non-criminal users are loosing their money in this.
There is not much info on what the US are planning to do that's makes it more nessesary to get a voice in the proces. If there is no voice it can't be heared.
I think an option is that BTC-e is going online again and you have to indentify yourself in the withdraw action, but that's just my idea.
I'm not willing to take my lose without a fight.
At this moment I have no clue how to set this all in action, but maybe some of you know this and are willing to help.
What's you opinion on this?

Rob

This could be a good option I have my life savings in there as well but please give them some time also.  please see my post also, the people around BTC-e are people of honor and have a very strong will to let Bitcoin be Bitcoin and that is decentralized.  They have nothing to do with money laundry.
They are simply a token exchange that made the mistake to add banktransfers to their site.

There should be an answer within 10 days

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2054204.0

My question is, did LE actually seize the wallets? The BTC-e website was up for a full day before the seizure message was posted up. This would give the second admin ample time to bunker down and secure the cold wallets. I'm quite curious if they are even aware of whom he is. If the website is now seized, I'd imagine they have a good idea at least, but possibly he is "out of reach" in a country with no extradition laws with the USA. I'd imagine he is the one holding the keys to the kingdom, not LE.

If the government has your coins, there is a decent chance some of you will be able to submit info to prove your ownership of coins. The only people I see even having a remote chance of getting their coins back are people outside of US jurisdiction that never had to apply to US law in the first place. These people would have to prove ownership by signing a message from a deposit address used to fund BTC-e as well as prove ownership of the IP used to log into the account.

If the BTC-e 2nd admin is smart none of that information exists anymore. He had a full day to clean house & wipe all historic information. It depends on if LE had an image of the servers before Alexander Vinnik's arrest was made public.

We will have to wait & see if LE announces the seizure of coins in the first place. So far they have been tight lipped about any sort of coin seizure in regards to BTC-e, which leads me to believe they have jack shit haha.

i hate to say this and i hope im wrong but more than likely the remaining admin just moved all the coins to a wallet he controls so he can cash them out and move to some tropical beach somewhere in peace.

I'm not sure, it would be a stupid thing to do because he will be hunted for the rest of his life. Many many people have a lot of funds there and some of them aren't the types you want hunting you.
And if this is a LE action I think they prepared it very well and I assume they got hold of all the servers and all administration at the same time, so even the other admins probably don't have the private keys anymore.
There was a strange transaction of ETH yesterday from a BTCe address I heared, but only ETH??

Blockchain transactions can't be erased, only BTC-e account info could. But if LE have the servers that is allso secured.
I hope we will hear more news in the next days...

I agree with you on that. Few people can take that risk and by doing that they make a wrong decision. There are two main reasons why to call it wrong. First, scamming people is bad. Second, risking your life or health for money isn't a good idea.

i hope so, i was collecting some ether on there by mining it from ethermine to cash out to bitcoin and id like to get it back.

BTC-e had two owners. The first one was Alexander Vinnik, who is about to be deported to the United States, where he is going to spend the rest of his life behind bars. The second owner is another Russian guy called "Aleksey", who is in some country which is outside the US jurisdiction. He has taken control of all the coins and gone in to hiding. Now this may be a strategy to protect these coins from being confiscated by the authorities.

Or more like he is running off with the coins now that their criminal activities have come to an end.

I don't believe the US will confiscate bitcoins from anyone who hasn't committed any illegal act as that would be illegal on their part.

There is not going to be a refund whatsoever, i remember when a renowned virtual currency Liberty Reserve owner was arrested around 2013 on the charges of money laundering and other things, people who had their on the website were not given their money which i believe went into the coffers of the US Government.

I don't know. If Vinnik was actually involved in the criminal activities, then the chances are that Aleksey was also associated with at least some of the crimes. Anyway, he won't be able to stay aloof for too long. May be within a few days, we will hear about his arrest.

What you are proposing is really a good idea from all indication because of the amount of money involved in the shut down but the issue is how sure are we that they are coming back online because without that there is no way to press for the refund. Also, since its within the control of the US government, how many people will come out even though you don't have anything to hide, to expose to the agency of government considering the several laws you might have broken unknowingly which is even not an excuse in law.

Well Authorities have confirm that Alexander Vinnik is involve with the crime that is why he is arrested with the now fugitive Aleksey, said in this news http://www.trustnodes.com/2017/07/26/btc-e-160-million-move-russian-arrested-laundering-4-billion-bitcoin, the one thing that simply not appealing to bitcoin users is if their money would surely return to them, I think the Authorities should return it, let's just see what will happen to this news, I think there is a petition going on regarding this matter.

Found the petition:

https://www.change.org/p/department-of-justice-we-want-our-money-back-from-btc-e (https://www.change.org/p/department-of-justice-we-want-our-money-back-from-btc-e)

Almost 1800 signed already!
His idea is getting BTC-e up again and maybe that's in the best interest of LE too. I think they want the people behind the laundering more than Alexander or Aleksy. So with the site back up they could monitor who is loggin in etc.
Hope they see it the same way as I do....

Well, on one side they would still be running from the FBI. And on the other, some very angry Russians (rumor has it, FSB and mob figures). I highly doubt they can live in peace anytime soon. As much it sucks to lose money here, I'd rather that than to be the site admins right now...

The petition is signed by 3,300 people already. I don't know how does this work. If 5,000 will sign the petition then what, they will return Bitcoins to users? Well at least I think they should seriously consider to do that.

i think at this point if the admins doesnt have a copy of the wallets, the government will not give anyone their coins back.. they will get auctioned off..

I think this is very unlikely because as you might have heared 4 billion USD illigal money wwere loundered throught this service. Imagine you steal all those coins from them and everybody knows who you are.
Not only one organisation will come for you.

The servers are in posession of the US Gov, as far as I am concerned, which means you will have to hire some good lawers to get it back

website seized already

no more comeback, take heart my friends if your money was in.

I think the same and this it will happen

he will not move to a tropical beach, he will BUY IT.  :D

about those who said that they lost their life savings.... what was in your mind to use a such exchanger? didn't you check it first? I mean, any human being with some decent mind, would think " hey, where am I going to send my funds? to an anonymous shit just because it's an "old" exchanger? there are few licensed and insured exchangers, why didn't you use them?

now, you are coming on forums to complain about your stupidity, ignorance and you are expect "someone" to help you and some relief. there is no help here.

LOL.. They absolutely will.

All of us who had coins on BTC-e will not see ANYTHING for years. If at all.. :(..

I always like BTC-e. Seemed a no-nonsense site.. It was actually my FIRST..  I'll miss it.

I had moved my BTC out of the exchange in readiness for Aug 1st.. so Only had a few Litecoins on there. Enough to hurt, but not to cry.

OP - Sorry for your loss. That's a cry amount...

Thanks for info.

I knew the US had seized the www.btc-e.com domain name, and the website was probably hosted in the US, but BTC wallets are different matter. The question now is the following. Will that Aleksey guy try to fight the US government, protecting the assets of legitimate American clients, or will he simply disappear, keeping the coins all to himself.

i used this exchange.. i lost coins..
i used it for its intended purpose tho.. i deposited ether and exchanged it for bitcoin..
unfortunately i had some sell orders down the list that hadn't gotten processed yet.. so i lost a few eth..

it would be nice to get them back, but no webpage with virtual signatures on it is going to persuade the us government to return them.

i did see the post with the admin saying he has some wallets.. so maybe they didnt get everything.

who cares about that? :)

of course, BTC-e will take all the funds they have and disappear. i don't know why there is still a discussion about this thing.

question for a "legendary": why did you use such exchanger and not a financial licensed one? example : Gemini

as long the people will keep using exchangers like BTC-e, the losses will continue to come.

i use 3 or 4 exchanges.. i don't keep ALL my coins in exchanges thats dumb.. i use hardware wallet for long term storage.

this exchange had a lot of volume and was pretty decent about deposits and withdrawals.. i had zero issues with it..
i live in washington state, so a lot of exchanges wont let me register.

plus id rather not send these exchanges my id and bank info just to sign up to trade eth for btc.

so, you knew that there is a risk by using BTC-e. well, now you just have to move on.

" a lot of volume" means nothing. Bitfinex has " a lot of volume" and they will be closed soon too. Kraken has " a lot of volume" and they will share the same destiny.

just take a look: https://gemini.com/blog/gemini-expands-into-the-great-state-of-washington/

see these. all of them accept your State:

https://www.plus500.com/

https://www.ig.com

www.fxcm.com/

http://www.avatrade.com/trading-info/range-of-markets/cryptocurrencies/bitcoin

But why? Isn't that illegal to take away other people's money, when they are just regular citizens? How can they explain that? What excuses can they use?

I think money will be returned in a month, in two months max.

If that would be so they would not announced that all money is going to be returned. Don't you think?
I am like others - hope for positive final even if I wasn't use this exchanger.

Returned by who? The FBI etc didn't even announce any seizure of funds. Naturally anything exposed to Moneypolo, Okpay, Mayzus could be seized. But based on how BTC-e was organized, it's very possible that much of the funds are intact. There was mention of purses being seized but one would hope that 1) they are encrypted and 2) just hot wallets.

Best chance of repayment is from BTC-e, not the feds. The DOJ is treating this like Libertyreserve.

Exactly. The funds are not seized but frozen. That's why it is a big chance that the funds will be returned to customers of BTC-e since the vast majority of them are not criminals and it is not right to take their money from them.

IIRC, the DOJ straight up called BTC-e users criminals in the press release. From the indictment, they even try to project criminality on users based on their trollbox usernames and commentary. When it comes to civil forfeiture, the burden is on the accused to prove the money is clean. That's very difficult to prove if you've ever sent coins into the exchange. Someone mentioned Libertyreserve... in that case, there was no repayment to users.

It's a mystery regarding how much USD, EUR and crypto they could get their hands on. I heard that the exchange never kept bank accounts in its name. Mayzus/Moneypolo/Okpay moved the money, BTC-e had third party accounts, and supposedly kept their fiat money in shell companies several degrees removed. As for crypto, one would hope that the keys would be encrypted on any seized server, and that cold storage would be out of reach.

I know many people who have disputed claims with BTC-E including myself.

they managed to recover 55% of their funds, the rest is confiscated/stolen by the FBI. So they set up a new site on the .nz domain so that their users can login and withdraw 55% of the balance they had there anonymously OR they can provide KYC documents and be credited a debt token (like bitfinex did) that Btc-e will try to repay with profits

Any news for refund

Important !!!

https://www.wsj.com/world/russian-bitcoin-exchange-co-founder-to-be-freed-by-the-u-s-after-americans-release-3f5fe066

https://www.binance.com/en/square/post/20290104961601