Bitcoin Forum

Im getting ready to sell my bitcoins around $450-500. I am using bitstamp to trade bitcoins and my question is: Is it safe for me to keep my currency at my Bitstamp account so that I easily can buy back on the dip?

Ofcourse they will say that my money is safe and protected, its their business. What Im asking is what people on this forum thinks because they are kind of objective. But the real threat is just if Bitstamp would get hacked right? Which is very unlikley, I get that.

Just look at what happened to inputs.io, anything could happen. If I were you, I'd keep my bitcoins offline.

This is true. At the same time, I don't think we have a basis for comparing Bitstamp to TradeFortress.

.....Then again, Bitstamp has not shown in the past to be particularly concerned with compliance. It could come back to bite them, as well as users.

Unless I'm mistaken, he's talking about fiat.

Yes right now I have my bitcoins offline in my bitwallet but what I mean is that when I sell the bitcoins for fiat to keep it in bitstamps system for easy buyback later. But it feels like there is a small chance that something could go wrong during those (days weeks) that I will keep my fiat in bitstamps system. But I could also get hit by a bus tomorrow.

Yes, I have that question as well. How safe is fiat on exchanges.

The fiat seems safe in relative terms. In this market, ANYTHING could happen, however.. know the risk, expose yourself as little as possible to something out of your control. Stamp is probably fine for such activities, or BTC-E, or Gox.. unless you want the fiat out. If you're simply BTC> Fiat, then fiat >BTC later and BTC whisked away, I think you'll be fine.. but again, limit exposure in the event of unfortunate incident out of your control.

what i do is:

- make sure withdrawal email confirmations is turned on BitStamp. that way you get to confirm all withdrawals

- then setup your email account to do 2 factor authentication via SMS (gmail has this for free). it might also be nicer that the confirmation can't be done by the exchange themselves (in case of BitStamp getting hacked). but if they got hacked bad enough then it might not matter though.

- also try to make sure you logout when you're not trading, so that your login session can't be stolen (with something like cross site scripting when visiting other sites)

Depends if you want to trade with them or not. I personally would keep them in an offline wallet and have some serious backups.