Bitcoin Forum

https://www.coindesk.com/btc-es-big-claim-bitcoin-withdrawals-begin-tomorrow/

This has remain to be seen. Actually I admired how BTC-e was able to or will able to pay its customers back in such a short time. Maybe their investors have really back them up so that the customers be refunded, specially those traders who's life saving what in their platform, or those individual has nothing to do with the laundered money or from the hacked. Its this really came into fruition then I think this will be one of the most satisfying for those who have lots of funds into BTC-e. Whatever percentage they will got is still good as compare to getting nothing at all. I'm sure trading will commence as well once they got their funds or their tokens. Let wait how this will end up.

So far I do not understand how they managed to get rid of the money laundering accusations and how they got back to operating so fast.

this looks more like a "secret deal". like in American movies: when the FBI and CIA need to find many criminals they make deals with the small criminals to get them to the big criminals.

such as when someone goes fishing and uses the small fish on the hook to serve as bait to catch the big fish.

I do not want to scare people, but this is strange.

If they redeem their promise then i have true respect for them. They are one of the few exchancges to ever be able to do this in such a short span of time, and reimburse their customers without any further questions asked.

However, it's not very clear to me if you decide that you want to have your money back now(you'll get 55%), will you essentially be forfeiting the rest of your funds which amounts to 45%(which is a lot), or will you just receive an IOU token like the BFX token? If the latter then what benefits will you get out of not claiming your balance right now?

Can anyone answer this, or is there not enough info from btc-e to answer this question?

If you withdraw early, then you forfeit the 45% token issue.  You are taking an assured cashout now, with no verification required, at the cost of your claim to the remaining 45% debt.


Here's a few reasons why this is unlikely to be a honeypot or "secret deal" as you call it.  BTC-e is opening withdrawals for users who wish to withdraw their 55% account value and forfeit their 45% debt token.  Anyone withdrawing early gets 55% of their account value in crypto.  No verification required.  So essentially they'll be firing out millions of dollars in crypto in the next few days without getting any information in return.  No ID documents, no information at all really.

The FBI isn't going to forfeit millions of dollars in assets for no reason.  Obviously they could just not send out those withdrawals, but that would destroy the trust they have built in the community.  If they don't actually process the withdrawals in the coming days, then they are essentially defaulting on their debt, under terms they created unnecessarily.  No one expected them to create an early withdrawal system.  It was a recent surprise announcement.

Looks like the refund site is up:

https://twitter.com/btcecom/status/904064838619373568

https://btc-e.nz/refund

You have to log in with your old password, they will make you reset it (and re-verify your email)

I dont think its in anyone's place to understand how they are getting back so fast as what matter most is the fact that they are paying even after a lot of doubt has been cast on this ever happening even myself. The next is to know how that will happen and what will the customers give in return to the have access to their funds. Several things I see happening as a result of this:
1. A further reduction in the price of bitcoin because of the glut that would be happening and

2. A surge in mixing activities due to the untrustworthy nature of the coin coming out from BTC-e because of the anonymity can no longer be guaranteed.

Yeah, the refund system is up, but if one request for refund now they would have to forget about the 45% of their money. better wait till september 15, then request for the refund/withdrawal. then you'd be getting 55% refund/withdrawal and 45% IOU tokens.

Did anyone got refund from this website? I was going to use BTC-E and it's great I didn't finalize that decision or I would be without my coins.
There were much people using BTC-E, hope someone will confirm how situation will go, will they receive money or not.

lite
Why will people receive 45% IOU tokens on or after 15 September?

I think this is because most of their fund got blocked by FBI when one of the owner got caught few weeks ago.
They are following footsteps of bitfinex, after getting hacked bitfinex have also offered IOU tokens and started late crowdfunding to compensate those losses. Don't know what is btc-e's further plan though...

They'll be launching a new site on that date or before, everything will be transferred to a new site(all user information etc..). on the new site one can withdraw 55% and have 45% of their money as IOU tokens. if one withdraws now they'd have to give up 45% of their money. more information is available here (https://btc-e.nz/news/3) and (https://btc-e.nz/refund).

I guess it depends on whether you believe the IOU tokens will be worth anything.

Happy to get at least something back..but it isn't the ideal situation.
Are the IOU tokens meant to be traded on their own market or is it literally a static token to be able to make your claims at a later stage.

If you go to their .nz site and click the "token" tab, you can see what they intend to do. The tokens seem to be tradable only against their liquid counterpart -- so, USD/USD token, BTC/BTC token, NMC/NMC token, etc. This also suggests that they intend to offer fiat markets. That further suggests that fiat holders who do not take the refund option will not have their funds converted to coins.

Has anyone actually received anything from them yet? I haven't actually heard anyone getting a successful cashout.

55% is actually a pretty good percentage considering the fact that the US government was on it. When liberty reserve got shut down nobody got a cent, and even after a few years now still no user have gotten anything back.

Also, how long do I have to wait for me to get a full refund instead of just 55%? If i cashout now will i get the IOU token as well?

Yeah, 55% isn't a bad percentage at all. The odds were much lower when btc-e got shut down initially.

I think that IOU tokens will be able to be traded on btc-e, with either fiat or bitcoin depending on the type of IOU you hold. Essentially something like the bitfinex BFX tokens when bitfinex was hacked and robbed of a lot of bitcoin. Not sure where the money is going to come from for the repaymento of IOU tokens and when they will be fully redeemed but i assume that they will come from exchange fees that btc-e makes, just like the bitfinex hack(though i'm not 100% certain so correct me if i'm wrong).

People have been receiving everything as they were promised, except for the BCC's that they were due initially - hours ago BTC-E has started to send out BCC, so that after all is a very positive sign. It shows that this exchange isn't interested in running away with people's funds, which makes me even more confident about my decision to not cash out.

55% is always better than when you realize that everyone could have been walking out empty handed, but for a lot people it's thousands and thousands in funds they have 'locked' in BTC-E, which makes it an easy option for them to stay. If I decided to accept the 55% and thus discard the other 45%, it would mean that I basically say goodbye to ~$15,000, and that's obviously not something I am going to do. Imagine how things must be for people with hundreds of thousands of funds in there.

Obviously, you will not get the tokens if you cash out now. The point is that you will never know whether or not you'll be able to gain back 100% - the important factor will be the market value of these tokens. It will be a tradable asset alongside other crypto currencies. It may get pumped hard, it may get dumped hard, it may remain stagnant for a while - only time will tell.

Thanks for the response.

Still a bit confused though. Say i choose to wait a bit, will i be able to get the 55% in immediately available cash, as well as the 45% in IOUs or will i just receive 100% of my funds in the form of BTC-e IOUs? Is there like a date for when you are able to get the IOUs?

Also, ouch. $15k is a lot of money, and i understand that it is quite a dilemma for anyone that has major funds in btc-e. Thankfully i don't have a lot and i just want to get a clear picture of what is going on, but i'm likely to just claim the 55% since i don't have a lot anyways.

If you wait, you will get 55% in crypto funds, and the other 45% will be tokens - basically the same as what people have received by cashing out now, but you as "bonus" will get the 45% in tokens. Once BTC-E is back online, you'll be able to cash out your 55% at start, and just keep waiting for the other 45% in tokens to increase in value, or to dump them directly and cash out these funds as well. I personally will cash out my 55% directly at the time they relaunch, where I then just keep waiting for how the token market will be performing price wise. Regarding the date, let's say that the chances are high that everything will be up and running before the end of this month.

There is one problem with that. We don't know the terms for withdrawals. This much is clear: no verification for 55% now. The most we know is that they have said on Russian forums that "small" withdrawals will be possible without verification. Otherwise, fork your passport, utility bill, etc. over to these people (and maybe the FBI)........

Thanks again! So basically to recap:

- When BTC-e relaunches, rebrands, and enables trading again, anyone that waited the period out will get 55% of their balance in a liquid coin plus 45% in an IOU token.
- Date that this will happen will be unknown but should happen by the end of the month.
- If you claim now you get the 55% but forfeit the IOU tokens.

Anything that I have missed?

Also, do you know whether there will be a lump sum payment at the end when the IOU token reaches its maturity for the full amount, or will there be partial payments along the way?

When you try to login, it should have sent you an email with your new password, after that, login again with the new password.

Verification was indeed a major point for me to consider cashing out 55% to get this saga to end, or to wait for them to relaunch and get my tokens as well, but then with the negative aspect of me having to verify myself. I chose to go with the latter and to wait - important factor is that I have found someone that is willing to lend me his personal information, ID, utility bills, etc. I will never send out my own personal information to BTC-E, and especially not with the FBI in mind.

Nope.

I believe if BTC-E at some point gained enough capital in whatever way, they will very likely end up repaying (i.e buying back tokens at issue price) all people at once. I find it very hard to believe that they will partially pay people, especially when people can cash out whatever percentage of their tokens at market rate at any time. My target is 90% of the issue price - as soon as it hits that level, I'll unload all tokens I have.

Get 55% refund is a good deal since there are many people may lose their money in BTC-E, I mean better than nothing.
I'm wondering about 45% IOU tokens, what kind of token it will be? their own, maybe BTC-E token?
Tokens will be credited to your account balance, which you can use for bidding and releasing codes,"
Skeptical about this token, if this token could be convert into bitcoin or fiat currency, then it will be a pain relief.

They are issued by the exchange. They are a debt token similar to what Bitfinex did last year after the hack. As with Bitfinex, you will be allowed to trade the tokens. So those that want to dump them immediately below the face value can do so, in order to get BTC or other real money out.

Otherwise, the tokens will supposedly be redeemed for their face value in the future. The timeline they put on repayment? 1-2 years, according to one of their forum posts.

Why would that be hard to believe? Bitfinex made monthly payments of 1+ % before paying the tokens back in whole. They also had open markets for the tokens. (As an aside, that whole affair was very shady -- repaying all the tokens at once right as banking capabilities went down, very fishy!)

To redeem the tokens in full, they said timeline is 1-2 years... I am not sure they will survive that long. At least not without getting seized in the meantime. This is why it's better if they don't offer USD on their exchange.

Can't believe that they actually are giving back people their money, I would have bet that BTC-e would just be running away and just exit scamming everyone after the legal problems with it.

So what i got out of this is 55% full refund and then you get some tokens worth 45% of your seized funds. Sounds pretty good to me.

It's good, with some caveats. Those who can't verify and US residents must take the 55% now and run, and have their accounts permanently deleted. It appears that fiat holders will be forced to verify on the new exchange (their funds won't be converted to coins). If you were holding coins, you are coming out fairly well, assuming BTC-e delivers on the 15th.

It's indeed a major gesture that they are legitimately interested in giving people back their funds, especially when you consider that they could stay away and keep everything for themselves. If we think about a different scenario, which is the government seizing the entire fund stash that belongs to btc-e, people wouldn't see anything back -- all funds would end up getting auctioned to fill their pockets. If we look at it from that point, it's the government being the real criminal here.

That is pretty true, I don't think if the government seized all of their they would still be giving out money like this. There must have been some legitmate traders on BTC-e and it seems really unfair that they are getting screwed over.

I wonder what the government will do with the rest of the 45 percent of the funds, do you think there is any chance that they will return it to people?

Well at least that better than nothing, im assuming that quite a bunch of people will be taking the 55 percent and just running away, making the best out of a shitty situation. Looks like fiat holders still have to verify which is alright but they still get there money back.

Let's hope the BTC-E delivers on the 15th, still got some respect for it.

I think BTC-e will indeed launch on or around the 15th. I think all in all, most people will have come out much better than expected a month ago. Indeed, after I heard the news of Vinnik's arrest and saw the silence from the exchange's official channels, I believed all the money was gone and they would disappear forever. So I am glad that people can recover some of their money.

However, I don't believe the exchange's future prospects are good. I really don't understand how it can be sustainable in the long term.