Bitcoin Forum

hi!
this is to all of you who have get your funds stolen by mybitcoin.com

mybitcoin.com's hosting provider is leaseweb.com
you can contact them, or the police saying that mybitcoin.com have stolen your bitcoin
it is likely that they will try to contact the onwer of the site, tom williams.

please contact them at:
http://www.leaseweb.com/en/about-us/contact

and please remember mentioning:
mybitcoin.com
83.149.112.133, its there ip
tom williams, the owner of the site.

i hope you get your funds back. :)

Let wait and see what happen.

I just opened an old thread because of mybitcoin.com. I just started messing with them and now this is an bad experience with them. Prolly anyone using them. I will try to contact them. Anyone know why the site went down? Just to take peoples bitcoin? Thanks for info..

I doubt the police will care. Try explaining BitCoins to them and see how far that get.  ::)

I say we track the owner down and beat the SHIT out of him and steal his money. 8)

We need more competition! Because having only one wallet service round town is not a good idea!

mybitcoin still have stolen peoples money.

mybitcoin didnt steal money. it stole bitcoins and that's what the police is going for.

Anyone using mybitcoin might want to double check that the login and password they used isn't the same they used on mtgox etc.

bitcoin is money.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money

something might of happened to the webmaster of mybitcoin. if servers are not paid for they will get suspended.

Only the web service is down, the TOR node and Privoxy are still running.

Is there ANY WAY TO GET MY BTC out of their system? Like, I have the wallet # and my authorization um, stuff. So... surely there is a way?

No. Sorry.

Going to post this to LeaseWeb. Anyone want me to add/change anything?

where is the end ") :)
else there is nothing more to add

I'm sorry but wallet services like these are just dumb.  Yes, they may be convenient but you're literally asking for your coins to get stolen, hacked, etc

Agreed, which sucks because I was in the process of moving all of my distributed funds to a central encrypted wallet when the server went offline.

Wallet services are quite useful - because no confirmation is required for between users transfers.
But if mybitcoin turn out to be scam, it will be hard to gain trust for such service.

Bitcoin by design is decentralized currency. If you centralize it in some obscure services you are asking for problems. If you want to use Bitcoin bank, then bank real address, name, phone number, photo of owner's face confirmed by 3rd party should be ABSOLUTE MINIMUM for you to even consider storing money there.

I prefer anonymous e-wallet service with anonymous owner who have a reputation.

In any case, the problem with mybitcoin is that they have no communication channel. Even if they have not stolen my money, I still move out...because they shown poor services.

Wait, YOU want to be anonymous, or you want bank owner to be anonymous?

They do have a communication channel. This forum. They just choose not to use it, probably because they're pulling a scam.

Or their bank wallet was stolen/destroyed and they decided to disappear.

I am not anonymous, but I certainly want an anonymous account. An anonymous owner is just more protection, especially if people can trust him.

They should be pulled from the wiki. I only started using them because it was on there as an option for ewallets. This really sucks. He better get that shit back online soon.

I fear this is it.  Sad news, if this is news at all.   No matter what, I think no one is overreacting in the end with how little anyone knows about the site yet has been dumping BTC in it like nothing, yet talk shit about Gox, who, while hacked, is on top of shit and very public with what is going on and how ways are made available to keep you secure.

At the least someone from the site could have a Twitter account if they don't want to post here.  I seriously feel bad for so many people.   I wonder what the people with the larger accounts are saying right now?   Where is the Bruce Wagners or other people who use the site?

I don't see how providing extensive info about bank company and his owner (real names/phone/fax/address/mail/mugshot) confirmed by 3rd party would make it impossible to provide anonymous accounts for their clients... or perhaps you misunderstood me. Communication channel was some forum account and people stored thousands of USD there? Christ...

IF the owner got arrested and questioned, they might figure out the location of the server and confiscate the money that sit on there.

The only thing we can do: learn our lessons and move on.

You CAN NOT trust any anonymous guy from Internet with your money. Otherwise we wouldn't need decentralized P2P currency.
What if he is police officer in the first place?

Do you trust the silk road? The silk road for all we know could be a CIA operation designed to nap dealers.

Silk road doesn't know location of dealers. As a buyer you can be anonymous too, at least you can deny you ordered anything and they have no way to prove it with proper precautions. Buyer risks relatively small amount of BTC with each transation - there is reputation system built-in that reduces risk. With bank it's very different - potentially you risk A LOT of Bitcoins and scammer can gather "clients" operating for months before shutting down, there is no warning like bad reputation messages until it's too late.

You can't be serious, at least all dedicated hosting companies have polices that they will NOT TOUCH YOUR SHIT on the server. If they mess with his server contents, they are violating their own policy, and that can serve up a lawsuit against the hosting company itself.

hmm. and?

And the hosting company won't do shit about your complaints. They have their own policies that they have to abide.

They aren't going to touch anyone's server because some guy put his server offline.

Don't blame the concept of hosted, secured wallet services. Indeed Bitcoin will never go mainstream if they don't exist. Blame individual providers of BAD wallet services - not the idea itself.

I asked them to make sure the server was online. I didn't request for them to do anything specific, like editing apache configs or something. Also, shows what you know about hosting providers - a lot of them will touch your shit in the following cases:

1) server is hacked and is compromising the providers network
2) server is offline and there is a SLA in place for your services
3) illegal activity that needs to be investigated (mybitcoin.com)
4) you are on a managed hosting plan
5) you ask them to help with something (technical services that charge by the hour) if you are not on managed hosting
6) plenty of other instances

Bottom line, they aren't going to touch MyBitcoin's server (bring it online if customer intentionally shut it down) because some random person (like you) asked for it. There are plenty of instances where the customer gives permission to the host provider for extra services to access their server. There are plenty of PCI certified hosts that have to abide by the PCI guidelines in order to make your server PCI certified. They don't touch your shit if they don't got your permission.

2) Really? If the customer intentionally put the server offline, the SLA has no effect at all. "Hey, the customer brought his server offline. Lets bring it back up."

6) Plenty of other instances that are allowed of their hosting agreement.

2. Yes, I have had customers halt their servers and leave the office. Then our monitors show the server as down so we turn it back on. SLAs for uptime % apply to this scenario. This isn't the case with mybitcoin but I was giving hypothetical situations.
6. you don't know jack shit about the agreement the mybitcoin has with leaseweb so stfu.

If the invite didn't work for you,  your answer will be heard in about 18 hours.  That's when flexcoin drops invite process and allows everyone to register.

1000btc frozen, lost or stolen by MyBitcoin?

By Todd Bethell

On 12 July 2011, 1000btc MtGox to MyBitcoin.
On 28 July 2011, 1000btc MyBitcoin to MtGox.

28 June 2011, payment notification was received. 8hrs later (the site was still up) visual verification was done in account history of the transaction and correct address.
48 hrs later still no coins.

This is where I need a block explorer expert.
21 minutes after MyBitcoin received the btc block explorer shows the coins from that wallet being split and transmitted hundreds of times all the way down to 1 Satoshi.
Question:
1.   Is this normal or a sign of fraud making it impossible to track?
2.   Are all wallets effectively used as ‘pool wallets’ for payouts?
3.   While I am not accusing MyBitcoin of theft, itn’t plosible that

Block 135867 (2011-07-12 07:06:54)   1000   Received: Address   •   1DeAkzL1MBriA37pHS46Nu1xcCzJ5sPupH
1000

Block 135870 (2011-07-12 07:27:05)   1000   Sent: Address   •   17e8zfFzVkKtx4ofdeoYHhdvu1cTKCpv2r
•   1NgjsaazumvjaR3WZuLqqKEed79RneQy2Q
0
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
MyBitcoin Payment Notification
MyBitcoin Robot [nobody@mybitcoin.com]
toddbethell@fastscanning.com
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hello,

This is a payment notification from MyBitcoin.

You have sent Bitcoins!

Transaction Number: 245107
Transaction Date/Time: 2011-07-28 22:30:02
To: 18jsFKuKZ4w8mhdTYy9bZKKHmkZNSZrRUC
From: 19vKB489Lx1rxqS366f63mKDLXp6q3v3Ct
Amount: -1000.00
Payment Note: MtGox businessaccount1

Thank you.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG/MBC v1.0

iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJOMeLqAAoJEJ+5g06lAnqF2ZYH/0FYDSmSxQa4l8+Q50e+1qEN
r9D6GXVPo5A4jXzgjtXTs2Rj2WmbLnsm2I8vc+fQFvniUiZT3nSbixVAU9wPm0w6
cTD8gNvEe+P9aNttZqGxa9xnCOVkE4ypF+n4jEmE/e3H5yh6Ix0oCI50luIeQZir
e0/5sF7ZbWDWhNta9+A6yvWYEI7KLZK+zke8EbLmB3YIDZ+EpaegrT74H6s7fHRR
cSopmnyDXX1biS8Mao7GSoTgXuPOTaMRae+4SN4pL1aoRZahWX/SsLXDj2Skjc/4
jtLBq7RLb8x3wo23IiURyzKZJr1Cw75cTULdLcNoUZajewapxIqA9DhFJK8HlSk=
=EFK8
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

---

Approximately 8hrs later the coins had not been credited to my MtGox account. MyBitcoin was still up. My account history showed the coins had been sent and the sent to address was verified correct.
Security Note: The instant before clicking the send button (perhaps when my mouse hovered over it) I notice a screen blink or something changed, but it was too late to avoid clicking the button.

Q1. Has my computer been compromised such that the send address was swapped at the last instant?
Q2. If this is so, how could the correct address be recorded in the MyBitcoin data base?
Q3. Is it coincidence that the MyBitcoin service has gone down for 48hrs with nary a peep from its owner? A person who was very proactive and vocal during the MtGox incident.
Q4. I’m hard pressed to think of a technical reason how or why a transaction confirmation bot would send confirmation of btc transmission before such a transmission had actually occurred. Let alone consciously programmed in this way. It would seem that the bot was part of the book keeping data base and not confirming actual transmission from a ‘hot’ wallet.
Q5. It seems that the way MyBitcoins was using the wallets of its members (pooling them as a matter of operational efficiency or draining them as a scam??) this makes it impossible to track coins or analyze if they are insolvent?
Q6. Was my 1000btc withdrawal lower to water level in his 'hot wallet' enough to show Tom was swimming without a suit? In other words, for whatever reason, he was operating insolvent?

I would not normally keep so many coins in an on-line wallet but this was in preparation for a business transaction that was delayed.

I am preparing a blog and forum post or lessons learned and recommendations going forward:

If anyone has further information please post it here and send to my email also, or give me a call.
Skype:  toddbethell
Email:  toddbethell@fastscanning.com
Cell:  1-949-394-5932

-----------------------------------------
Action taken:
Phone: +6499518329  (always busy)
Emailed: enquiries were sent to abuse@mybitcoin.com
It is well know that Tom… only replys to ‘in-mail’ on his site.

Tom Williams
Main Street
PO Box 556
Charlestown, Nevis, KN

"The Founder" No offence but we don't need you advertising your shit up on this thread, Alot of people may have lost there coins, including myself which I had a large amount on there. So yeah im pretty pissed off at the moment, I am 100% sure the "mybitcoin" owner/owners are reading this thread, and I have a feeling the more fuss we make about mybitcoin stealing our coins the more likely he will do a runner with our coins, I know if its not back up by the end of next week I will be looking at legal advice to retrieve my coins back, Saying that it could be unforeseen problems on his side and hopefully brings the once trusted site back

Totally agree with you mate, poor form by "The Founder", also agree about all the fuss being made, like many of us reading or following this thread (and other threads) we have bitcoins at stake here, so if there is a genuine reason why mybitcoins is down atm and all this negativity is read by the owner of mybitcoins (probably unlikely) it could just very well give him an incentive to run off with our bitcoins ..  >:(

bullcrap..

If they were an honest company.. a simple notice would be put up..

We are experiencing technical difficulties, or we are busy upgrading our service or.. something.

To just take a service off-line without any form of notice is madness...  even if it does come back online, trust and confidence would of been lost.

Mybitcoin is just damn incompetent. Doesn't matter if they are the most honest to god trustworthy do the right things people in the world. They never thought a communication channel is important and now they are paying for it in reputations. That's fine with me. I will move my business elsewhere.

People who are in the bitcoin economy are very incompetent to a fatal fault, including me.

"I should have backed up. I should not relies on a single online wallet service. I should..."

We are in the early stage of growing in the bitcoin economy where things are going to be crazy and loss unimaginable. We will all lose and win based on our competency. That mean everyone in the economy. The exchanges, you, me, other bitcoiners. Sometime we dodge bullets and sometime we don't.

I would be surprised if most of us in this era will retain our wealth and our bitcoin. If anything, the few lucky bastards who survive and become billionaires are the most lucky and perhaps the most competent.

Remember, there is no gubernment that take care of us when we fail. It would be bad if the government bailout the exchanges and the business that fail because that reward incompetency.

Either we become competent....or we don't.

Amen, and doing it properly IS hard!

They should change the site name from mybitcoin.com to NOTmybitcoin.cum!!!!!! HEE HEE HEE!!!!!!!

He was replying directly to a concern regarding competing services, as he has been in all of these similar threads. He's not threadjacking; if someone asks if there's any other ewallet sites, he answers. In my opinion he's approached the entire situation gracefully, and I won't fault him for providing an alternative to the community.


We all are and it shows.

This really sucks. 

My store is down due to this problem though no funds lost.  We do need a mybitcoin replacement, or someone to take over the site, charge something for the services and do it properly.  I as a merchant do not mind paying a fee of 1% to have this type of service.  Offering this service and not charging is going to lead to little or no customer support as no one is being paid to take care of the site or the hosting. 

I hope they come up tomorrow, but I will tell you if too much pressure is put on the hosting company (constant phone calls, potential police action though unlikely) the owner of mybitcoin might not be able to come back up on the same hosting company further delaying its return. 

I am not saying don't try to get your money back, I am just pointing out that if this is a simple server outage, it could be turned into a bigger problem by forcing leaseweb.com to not allow mybitcoin to come back up on their servers due to all of the complaints. 

With no real customer support it is impossible to tell what is going on. 

We have a lot of bitcoin there..... ( as has already been reported in the press )...    Many -- perhaps most -- non-technical people... and businesses, I know and associate with,....  rely on MyBitcoin.com     

Most of my friends and family and associates.... all have all their bitcoin there too.

I hope it is back up tomorrow.

I think it's time to get in action, hire a detective or something, ASAP!

This is depressing :( So sorry Bruce. I hope the guy turns out to just be on holiday or something, but I doubt it.

Perhaps you should wait some time before shouting scam and trying to destroy someones life.
There was a bug in MB before it went down, so its more likely that he put the site down to fix it.  MB was down for service updates/fixes in the past and always came back, so no reason to spread so much hate after only 1 day.
Also if he would be a scammer, he wouldnt take the site down, he would continue to operate it and just disable withdraw in some way.

Dude, did you just emerge from Plato's cave? I was having trouble with mybitcoin for a couple of weeks before I went public about mybitcoin (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=26224.0) on July 5th.  I can't see any scenario where Pirate "Tom Williams" is unaware that his site is stealing people's money.  We've all been had.

Oh, yes and Mybitcoin.com is a scam!

And can anyone tell me what happened to the guy mentioned in bruce wagner's podcast who had 25k coins in mybitcoin?

I have been away for 2 days and when i return i find out that my couple of coins at mybitcoin are probably lost.. this sucks and i trusted the service.

even if they return back online with all the BTCs it will be hard to gain the users' trust back.. Now Im thinking about using ruxum, tradehill or even gox as my web wallets..

I cannot see that working very well at Tradehill, but could be missing something.  It takes a fair amount of time to get my BTC out of Tradehill.  (Getting money in via US domestic wire and trading is faster than getting my BTC out in my experience.)   I don't think they are optimized for this, and have probably been being extra careful for the last several weeks at least to watch for scammers (doing Dwolla's job for them.)

OTOH, at bitmarket.eu, I do have immediate control over an address there (so it seems.)  I can transfer any part of the BTC balance to anywhere I want (so it seems.)

I personally feel most secure when I have my own coins in my own wallet.dat files in my own places with my own encryption.  Unfortunately, arranging this is a modestly technical operation and I've fallen back on skills and understandings gained in the process of getting paid to work on computer systems for a while.

hi you are probably right about tradehil. i can see up to 12 hours for btc withdrawal on their site (it took me much less though, but one can't rely on it if fast transaction is needed)
ruxum seems better for this purpose (immediate transfer between 2 accounts+fast withdrawals out of the exchange, but they are still beta and may introduce some transfer fees later)
bitmarket- sounds good i can try but there may be some bug in their system (see the thread: Unauthorized BTC Withdrawals from Bitmarket.eu Account)

wallet .dat - i don't feel much secure with this either (will have to learn more about how to do encryption..)

If it were an honest service.. there would be a notice or something..

closing down.. and keep quiet is no way to run a company.

problem with bitcoin is the majority of the services have no standards or any kind of proper business knowledge. Honest opinion its very mickey mouse.

Hows this for a standard.
The *first* thing you should do - is have a proper 'about us' page which actually contains contact details.
Not just a contact form - phone numbers and a physical address.

UABB has no such info.
Put that up *FIRST* - then give us your spiel.

http://uabb.org/about.php -  is empty as at 2011-08-01

Seriously. You should be educating consumers to look for this information first - so you need to have it yourself.
Who started it, and who administers it is important information.

I see also " Our professional escrow services stop fraud before it starts."

Oh.. so UBB itself has *business* operations?
A faceless business without contact details - dishing out 'ratings' for other businesses.. some of whom might compete???
 FFS.  ::)

Ok - so I have a feeling that you're actually acting in good faith - and this is just an oversight.
My point is - this is just the sort of 'oversight' that should raise red flags for consumers and that UBB should use to give a *lower* rating on!
Don't give me  "oh.. we're getting round to that" .. that just legitimizes this excuse for other operators who might actually be shady.

RULE *1*: Site goes live - must have contact details, preferably including registered business/association number in some jurisdiction.

Given the shenanigans going on in the bitcoin world... do I really ask too much??


(EDIT: btw - obviously I have no idea who the 'you' is in this case! For all I know Matthew - you're just mentioning a site you found, though you do seem to be rocking a signature-pimp-logo for them)

rightfully so.  One of Bruce's accounts has about 250K bitcoins!!!  Bruce, could you contact MyBitcoin to see if they would appear on your show?  This would add a new layer of legitimacy into the company... or else, we will be moving all our funds somewhere else. 

Dude, not so ignorant if you actually do some homework and have a listen to NPR's podcast.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/13/137795648/the-tuesday-podcast-bitcoin

"wtf" indeed.  One thing after another is making the situation a lot more stressful.  Anyways, I hope the Korean exchange is going well, Matthew N.W.

The figure mentioned on NPR is 25K (Which Bruce claims isn't his..)

It's very unfortunate that mybitcoin has been mentioned as a way for beginners to use bitcoin on some major news networks.
NPR & CNN at least.

Matt, let us know when your UABB is up and running.  We'd like to get listed.

My guess is that it's not as painful as you might think.

1.  verify business has all proper operating licenses
2.  verify owners have no criminal record

here in the US there are background searches you can do for a small fee.  it is very common.

I think you should kill the escrow.  Everything else is fine.  Businesses and consumers should connect directly, that's the whole point of bitcoins.

(EDIT: as you said above offering escrow as an option sounds the best way..  even 'requiring businesses to offer it as an option' could be a problem)


That seems like a non-starter to me.
Routing all payments via a central system is technically fragile, politically risky, innovation unfriendly and impractical to set up for all the various foreign currencies & payment systems out there.

Perhaps you meant only for Bitcoin transactions..  but I suspect it will be the minority of enterprises that are truly 'pure Bitcoin'.

For the sort of business I have in mind - the escrow would be complex - sometimes requiring only part payment back to the client.
Escrow services based on a written escrow agreement where the UABB can easily determine fulfillment of conditions are one thing..
but are you really going to intermediate in all that in a high-volume transaction environment?

Requiring businesses to give their customers an *option* to route payments via the escrow may be nice for specific types of transaction.

Escrow only caters for a subset of the possible services for which someone might 'hand over' bitcoins in expectation of a set of services.
The point at which actual 'payment' occurs and value changes hands is service specific.  


How you can require 'at no additional cost' I don't know. Even with pure Bitcoin transactions there will ultimately be fees.
Maybe all you meant is that when the business and customer do both choose to use your escrow - the business doesn't charge an additional fee above what the network charges?
If so.. sorry for my rambling above, but it wasn't clear :)


P.S nice to see the 'about us' improvements on the UABB site.

In the spirit of trust and transparency, it would benefit the community if we had some of this information from you as well.

The domain names uabb.org and uabci.org have been registered anonymously. And the email m_wright@hanmail.com, which is associated with baok.or.kr, has bounced back as undeliverable.

I love this idea and it could really benefit the community, but with everything that's been happening lately we need more. Are we supposed to trust one anonymous person on the internet because another anonymous person says they are legit?

For trust, we need total transparency in the organization that is handing out these accredations.

EDIT: don't take this post the wrong way. It's not meant to be accusatory. These are valid concerns!

I just find out about MB down!!! What happen if some BTC got send to my account when the site is down? they got lost? they may could be sucked in and bye bye new digital coin?

I see so many good people in this new event of BTC but there is always that ass have to ruin the party!!!

Well this is embarrassing for me.
After taking you to task on this issue - I realize I'm guilty of attempting to do business with a bitcoin site that gives no more than a support email address.  Bitbills.com

Normally - for my non-bitcoin purchases - I've been pretty careful about checking out who I'm doing business with. I think the fact that I saw one of the bitbills guys appear on Bruce Wagner's bitcoin show, made me let my guard down!

However I'm hopeful that bitbills will do the right thing by anyone caught up by the problem that they were using mybitcoin as a payment processor.
They have a great product and a good reputation that is no doubt worth protecting.

They really should provide more info about their operation though. For bitbills to ever be accepted by the general public, they'll need to have some idea of who the issuing company actually is!

I'm creating a business account on your page now.

Edit nvm your links seem broken

And I think folks from now on shouldnt trust anyone who isn't public/active in the community.  Because most serious businesses absolutely are.

@ Matthew N. Wright : open your own thread if u want to advertise your company/service.

instead of wasting your time becoming a member of uabb.. rather opt for a truebusiness ID from geotrust or one of the many extended validation ssl providers, they will audit your information and make sure you are who you say you are.

This is about mybitcoin.com being offline, not about your own service.

Not a bad idea,  I wanted to register flexcoin there but it won't let me create an account :(   literally clicking on the buttons wouldn't open any forms.

I love this guy :)
I mean not literary  :-[ 

Contact one for the manufactures in korea or taiwan and have a batch of 100+ made for you.

You can even get them to stick 2x 6870's per a pcb. which would work out the same cost as a 5850 and return more mhs.

Yeah it really is.. comes down to money .. you have it, they want it.

100 gpus @ us$150 = us$15 000

Contact jetway, had really good dealings with them in the past.

 Jetway Information Co., Ltd.
 Address: Ltd.9F., No.207, Sec. 3, Beixin Rd., Xindian City, Taipei
 Tel: 886-2-89132711
 Fax: 886-2-89132722
 Web: www.jetway.com.tw
Info: sales@jetway.com.tw
 Support:technic@jetway.com.tw

--------

BTW: price per mhs .. 5770 cant be beaten, also it is the most efficient in mhs per watt