Bitcoin Forum

Jack Kingston, a cryptocurrency trader from Melbourne, Australia has claimed to have lost $430,000 woth of digital coins(bitcoins and dashcoins) in the just seized exchange BTC-E.

Continue Reading=> https://zycrypto.com/jack-kingston-lost-430000-btc-e/

  He is not the only one. Thousands of people lost lots of money. Everyone in the trollbox had to have at least $1,000 to chat. I heard a huge whale from Dubai lost millions. Apparently he had 3.5 million on the site... why would anyone keep such an amount there is beyond me. I just hope everyone gets their refunds in due time, but it seems unlikely at this point.

 Well, how are you going to do whale-like trading without keeping whale-sized numbers of coin on an exchange?!

Didn't BTC-E claim that all crypto funds are safe and they will come back online shortly.

Anyway it's a crazy high amount to store on a BTC exchange. Hopefully the owner receives back his coins and learns his lesson.

Keeping that amount of money on a shady exchange that has no regulations governing it's operations will result in losses like this.

We have warned people over and over again, against storing large amounts of money/btc on these exchanges and people still risk

doing this. When will they learn? Even the regulated exchanges are not risk free.  ::)

This is the leason to all those moaning about being advised to keep their coins off exchanges during the fork.  ::)

This quote might be sarcasm, but with $3.5m in Bitcoin you don't need to do any trading...just let it sit there!

To say that it's frustrating to watch the US claim jurisdiction over this case is the understatement of the year. But what's not being discussed is why the countries who do have jurisdiction in this case (i.e., Russia, Greece, New Zealand, others?) are so willing to allow the US to assume jurisdiction. US agencies can't operate so openly without the permission of the local countries. Perhaps the only exception is the internet and only because the US can hack and control whatever site they want...and they don't need some country's permission to do so. The internet is still the wild west...it's like operating in the ocean...there are no borders.

That's really bad as bitcoins is involved in this situation there is no chance ge get's his bitcoin back because of lack of proof available. I have seen many problems on their site just bought bitcoins once took 10 days for withdrawal to get approved maybe people can learn from their mistakes and avoid such exchanges

Well I think they may never come online again. I read today that the owner is detained by the police officers. Unless he has given his powers to some of his co helpers to run the site probably we will not see BTC-E again online. People still keeping high amounts of bitcoins in exchange is a thing that surprises me a bit, I guess people will never learn except the hard way.

Link when the owner was detained by the police: http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-greece-russia-arrest-bitcoin-idUKKBN1AB27W

I cannot reach the site today.

Jack has fallen because he and others failed to heed to advise times without number that exchange sites are vulnerable not only to hackers but several interested parties even the owner himself is a threat to the site but they fail to take heed and move their funds out thinking exchange sites has turn to a bank where you can fixed deposit for eternity. The only consolation we can give them is for btc-e to live up to expectation and pay them back as promised.

This is so painful to hear. Hope the money can be recovered.

Your information on btc-e is outdated, btc-e owner(s) have gained control over database and wallets, they might come back!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2063529.0
https://www.coindesk.com/troubled-btc-e-exchange-claims-control-of-databases-and-bitcoin-wallets/

People were advised to get their coins off exchanges and into secured wallets they control the private keys because of the fork. So, why is anyone complaining they lost coins for that sake? Obedience is better than sacrifice, it isn't only applicable in the Old Testament. It is a maxim. Let the losers lick their wounds. No pity party for anyone.

I hope you are right but things are not looking good. I still cannot reach the site and after many tries it finally says that this domain has been seized and I see about 6 logos of different US agencies. I hope they come back but surely it will not be the same website btc-e.com anymore. They need to add these wallets and databases to a new website and would be better if they keep the server in some third world country this time.

 Well, you and I don't need to do any trading but a BTCaller's gonna BTCall.

https://i.imgur.com/VNoIhmA.jpg

Not sure if I'm suppose to laugh at this tool thinking it was actually safe to keep that much money on an exchange despite of multiple warnings given by the community.He sure must have been a over-confident trader.
I don't know if he can claim the money back but he learned a valuable lesson for sure.
Next up - Tools losing massive BTC trying to convert it into BCH from exchanges.

Damn that's a really huge loss an i believe that he should just forget about it entirely, The is no way that the US Government is going to refund any more to the people who lost their money on that website, The same thing happened with the now defunct Libertyreserve when the founder was arrested on similar charges like the owner of BTC-e.

Stupidity of people who are rich and are not creative. If I was keeping that large amount in cryptos, I would store it on my own so no one can steal it. It's stupid to store $430k on online service protected by only password.

Tough luck for the guy, it would take a whole lot of effort to get back those and likely it will take also a lot of time before that happens. BTC-e is in deep trouble. So before he gets it, BTC-e has to really give in and show the bitcoins. But the government will likely lock them up first then possibly before they can distribute the bitcoins to the users that have deposits with the service. But really, expect it to be a few years from now.

Brutal. Sucks for that dude.

I'm surprised that BTC-E ended up getting shut down, it didn't seem like they would have anything happen to them but I guess it happens to most exchanges at some point. Either getting some third-party involved with some kind of investigation or seizure, having some sort of internal scandal for one reason or another, or just failing to provide the proper technical capacity for their service. Seems to get worse with every passing day.

This is why you don't keep a lot of money in an exchange, though. I would at most keep $40,000 in an exchange if I had $430,000.

danngggggg that sucks. btc-e was the exchange i used to use for trading. Don't trade anymore because it just led to me losing lots of money. Thank goodness I didn't have any money on btc-e anymore.

He didn't lose it because it was only protected by password. He lost it because btc-e got hijacked by the FBI.

I think these stories are good to come out. It may help convince them that most of the funds on their have nothing to do with illegal activities.

I don't believe you. You would be way more upset. You saying the siezure is just after losing that much ? That's not what i would be saying.
You say it's just yet you don't have your bitcoins back so how is that just ? This whole "siezure" nonesense is out of control and I'm not sure I'd i actually believe it. I mean if the taking it down being of some crime then why are they not giving people their money back ? Total bull crap if you ask me.

as long as it was all in crypto he might still get it all back. it's the people who had fiat tied up with mayzus services who are probably screwed.

isn't it ironic that a bunch of 'criminals' might return everyone's money but not the world's policeman.

a great point but nobody listen to us !  :)   so many " i know better" sheep here...

Not ironic at all, because it's the US government that is one of the biggest criminals the world has ever seen. Their word is law, and nothing can change that. That's why I am actually glad that it isn't the US government that holds people's crypto funds. If I had to choose, I would rather see all crypto funds get burned, instead of seeing them get auctioned off by the government. But then again, we still don't know if BTC-E is legitimately interested in returning people's funds - their words have no value at this point.

This is the problem with governments trying to shut down "money laundering operations". There will be so many legitimate traders will be be essentially robbed if you like in the process, and the ratio of legit traders vs criminals is probably so little anyways that any logical human being will say nope, this is not the way that we're going to approach this problem. It's just plain stupidity.

However, why he had $430,000 worth of it on one site is really unprofessional. When you trade bitcoin you are not only taking on a huge risk of currency depreciation but also exchanges shutting down. Even though it's not your fault, this is something that even beginner traders should stop doing - STOP STORING SO MUCH FUNDS ON EXCHANGES. Bitcoin is designed for a reason. You hold your private key, you don't need to rely on anybody else. If you keep storing bitcoin on an exchange then this defeats the purpose of bitcoin altogether.

He might still get it back though, since BTC-e promised to reimburse customers.

It might be stupid... but they realize that themselves as well...
And what about people who had big orders? Just because they want or need to move a big order they are stupid? Sometimes it just cant be helped and you need to put trust in an exchange.
Anyone that wants btc to fiat or fiat to btc has put trust in some organization or person at some point.
In the end they still got f*cked over.. feelsbadman

Actually it is quite difficult to identify such scam and also once lost bitcoin can't be gained again. Bitcoin was originally developed by a group of programmers as a anonymous currency so its hard to get it back. We do not actually get the information of the payee as we get in bank details so its quite hard to recover the lost bitcoins.

There might be some more such people to have a big loss in the BTC-E scam. I don't think, there might be any good way to get their money back. They can just try to find their money and perhaps they may succeed. BTC-E have given a big shock to even those who were holding small amounts.

what the fk shock can you have if you use an anonymous exchanger? :D
you have to expect that sooner or later your funds will be gone. you can think otherwise only if you are an arrogant and then you deserve to lose your funds.  

now, the sheep are doing the same with Poloniex(the next one who will fall). the sheep have been  warned but they are still using it.  ::)

$430k is serious money, but you can bet there are way bigger players, wait till they start looking for blood from BTC-e if refunds are not forthcoming. It's one thing to have a foreign government chasing you, but it's another thing altogether to have super rich, possibly shady locals after you.

If BTC-e runs with the funds, then I would expect bad things to eventually happen to them due to the large sums involved. The logical thing to do is try to start trading again, so people who want to, can at least withdraw their crypto. I would imagine the fiat is lost, but that could be partially replaced with crypto, eg. BCC. Once the crypto is disbursed back to the rightful owners, then to some extent BTC-e hands are clean, ie. "Move along, nothing to seize here".
Lets hope they haven't lost a truck load of fiat they can't repay.

If BTC-e does refund money to customers (whether partially or fully), it's very possible they might socialize losses. i.e. crypto holders on the exchange may see depleted balances, and fiat holders may see increased balances (to replace the missing fiat). This is what Bitfinex did when they got hacked last year.

That's actually... That's sad. Wow. Many people might kill themselves losing that amount of money. I would never want to know how the feels. I'm so sorry ;(

It all depends on your financial situation. Some people are quite easily accepting their loss that is in the tens of thousands of dollars worth of crypto and fiat, while others make a huge problem out of the few hundred bucks they lost. At the end of the day, it's the customers that are the losers here, and regardless of the amount people have lost, this is something we don't want anyone to go through. The chances for whatever amount of funds to be returned aren't very high, but they aren't zero either -- people keep hoping for the best since there is nothing more to lose. Everything people end up getting back is a great happening, especially now the price has gone up in value considerably.