Bitcoin Forum

hello,
am i the only one that got message from bitstamp that they are compromised?
what will happen next?

Their CEO tweeted the following:
"Thank you all for your patience, we are working diligently to restore service and hope to have an ETA later today."

and

"To restate: the bulk of our bitcoin are in cold storage, and remain completely safe."

I hope is not closed forever  :(
i have money and bitcoins there

i think it was just a temp. technical problem
they are not closing their business, they will back after they resolve the issue

Although the Bitstamp situation looks bad right now it will be good for the whole scene if they can get it resolved without scamming everyone from their remaining btc held in "cold storage".

I got the email too. It's most likely a temporary issue. I would not be overly concerned if you have funds stored there.

Simply they got Goxed

Some thieves goxed them about 18.000btc's, that's why they re off.

Smells like second kerpeles incident.

I don't think they got Goxed. It will be test to see if we can count with them to future. I hope they will resolve the issue without any funds lost. Kind of like Bitstamp.

They wouldn't get off with that execuse in year 2015, back when btc was nowhere regulated and accepted as normal currency it could happen.

GOX was dead long before they announced it. They were faking trades for months and people reported withdrawal problems a year before.
Owners of Bitstamp know that a functioning and popular exchange is worth more than their lost coins.

You can hope they will return them, but very likely you won't receive back all of it. If you can get back 88% then consider yourself lucky.
They would need time before anything happened.

Let this be a hard lesson for people NEVER store money on exchanges unless your trading. Use your own wallets.

Is anyone setting up a secondary market in Stampcoins, like the one that was set up for Goxcoins?  This means someone buying up Bitstamp accounts at a discount. The account holder gets, say, 75% now, and the buyer takes the risk of collecting.

Difficult after they have shut down their API. But their XRP gateway is still running I've heard. But I hated the Builder. Something like that should be banned. It sets people additionally under stress. I have witnessed this on Gox as a victim all the way down. Since then never traded again.

I have to find this a hard coincidence to believe that BTC has way underperformed all expectations in the past several months, and even specifically in the past several days crashing further down to $280's (when the hack apparently started), into $250s after and recovering a bit.  

Basically, if Bitstamp based their business model off BTC rising to "moon" levels, then they would be caught off guard by the price drop.  They have this backup plan in place to save themselves in case of plummeting prices, so they can either cash in on insurance or just simply pocket the coins.

Anyways the timing on this issue just seems really hard to believe, at the start of a new fiscal business year and right when BTC is (against all predictions) dropping into $200's, this terrible "hack" happens to a major exchange that they honestly did not prepare for?

You mean they want to save tax? The 5 million will have a tax-reducing effect, of course.

Lol yeah if you can prove you actually took a loss.

How do you prove that they were not the hackers to fabricate a hack in order to attempt to write off losses to deduct taxes?

My guess is you can't prove it 100% or disprove it either. There will always be a level of uncertainty unless the hacker reveals themselves and takes responsibility for their actions.

Not likely.

If they lost $5 million in customer funds, Bitstamp will probably not reopen in its old form.  They only had $600K in capital last year. Here are their options:

1. Reopen insolvent. Just reopen as if nothing had happened, but without enough money to pay everybody. Hope that not too many people ask for their money back. Stall if they do.  This was the Mt. Gox strategy starting in June of 2013.  If Bitstamp tries that, it won't end well.

2. Raise at least $5 million in capital. They might be able to get that from a venture capitalist.  A VC would insist on putting in some real financial controls. But is the revenue there? Running a Bitcoin exchange isn't really that profitable. We know how little Mt. Gox actually generated in profits before they got into trouble.

3. Get bought out by someone bigger. Selling the company to a bigger financial company, which would take over operations, might work out. But none of the wannabe Mt. Gox buyers actually had any serious money. Nor do any of the Bitcoin exchanges.  

4. Liquidate. Everybody gets back a pro-rata share of what they're owed, maybe 80-90%, and Bitstamp ceases to exist. Probably the best solution.

certainly you are not, bitstamp closed for the loss of 18,000BTC, we should look for another exchange to do trading,  such as btc-e lakebtc kraken

I am not sure this would be a good idea. I am on the fence as to if the goxcoins exchange was a scam or not. The fact that the operator of btc/goxbtc exchange shut down and prevented people from trading after gox shut it's doors made me somewhat suspicious

18,000BTC is just a little part, their ceo said "the bulk of our bitcoin are in cold storage, and remain completely safe"
how many BTC on bitstamp actually?

5million dollars is unable to defeat bitstamp, we just need to find a place to rest, lakebtc is good