Bitcoin Forum

I AM LOGGED IN AND READY TO GO!

Wooohooooo! BUY? SELL?  :D

Price up!!!

lol , I wish that happens.  But I don't see any reason of that happening just because of it coming back.

Interesting, big green stiffies on BTCe and Bitfinex.

Trading begins at 4pm EST. That's 1 hour from now.

What will happen to the price when trading resumes? Do you think there will be a lot of sellers?

actually the price is rising right now

Moon  :P ?

Yes, but its not necessary its because of bitstamp coming back . I am not sure what kind of way will the prices be influenced, as people could sell or buy with their funds on stamp.

YES! CRYPTOCURRENCIES SHALL NEVER DIE!

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-exchange-bitstamp-resumes-services/

I have a feeling the price will go up when trading resumes.

Especially if all the lost coins are refunded, it will make MT.GOX look very, very bad.

Finally , let the trading begin  ! :)

it is back now, but can someone withdraw its coins?

Well, MtGox claimed to have lost all 750,000 coins. They would be in no position to refund that.
Bitstamp was hit for a smaller amount.

should be possible soon but i cant withdraw my Hashlets  :'(

It's not live until 4pm EST. 50 minutes from now

bearstamp

When you look at how many coins MT.GOX lost in comparison to Bitstamp I'm not convinced at all MT.GOX 'lost' them, the maths just didn't add up, either it was a gross negligance of their security or someone on the inside ( I'm more and more thinking it was Mark Karpeles himself ) went and took them.

I have seen in twitter users claiming they have been able to withdraw

This is very good news.  Hopefully having a main exchange will restore some confidence in bitcoin.  Thanks LiteCoinGuy for the summary.

Price already ticking up!  Good Luck everyone!

Pretty cool  ;D , lets hope that the price will rise once again and for good

look at this

Trading on @Bitstamp will resume at 2100 UTC today. We can confirm withdrawals have been working. #Bitcoin

https://twitter.com/WorldCryptoNet/status/553645984883167232

What about withdrawals? That's the real question. Has anyone had a successful withdrawal yet? Has anyone had an unsuccessful withdrawal?

no problem. i would recommend that anybody should change the password! why? just do it.

some users are claiming to have succesful withdrawals
https://twitter.com/Datavetaren/status/553640553586622465

You're right, like with Bitcointalk hacks, if you're using an old password and it's floating around the internet someone could get at your stuff, always use easy to remember and interchangable passwords and do not ever use one password for your financial accounts, especially if that password is also the same as the one in your day to day and social accounts.

otherwise we will have the next chaos in 2 months...hopefully not  :-X

time for the price to go up

buy buy as fast as you can

Ok so it's 21:00 UTC, trading has resumed but I don't see anything happening yet.


edit: nevermind, trading just went live! Bounced to $291

Ok you're right. I was mistaken. I don't know if anyone here has successfully withdrawn yet

Yeah it's still not active. Lies! :P

holy shit it's live! LOOK AT IT GO


$294 price at opening

Finally Bitstamp is back, was about time.

People are very excited, price may see a short bump.

Live again! About 6 minutes late  ;)

I am amazed the price is higher than BTC-e. I thought there would be tons of sells. Not so. At least not in the first 5 minutes. It's up to $298


$10 price spread! Quick! Buy on BTC-e and sell on bitstamp. Arbitrage!

Withdrawal works.

No trading fees, so a bunch of trading bots will smooth out the volatility from all the micro transactions.

1150 BTC being dumped at $295.99

Yes, they're back up, and after 20 minutes there's been enough volume to get them back in sync with the other markets, around $288. Bitcoinwisdom is tracking Bitstamp, but Bitcoin Charts (which is owned by Karpeles) is not.

That didn't take long. All is back as usual after 20 minutes.

The media loves the crash stories... now let the media write about this.

I'd be very surprised if they even acknowledged this positive thing at all, they like to focus on a narrative and once they've decided with it they'll go with it even when piles of evidence stack up against them.

The next question is whether Bitstamp is now insolvent.  They lost $5 million.  Did they get new funding to replace that, did they have enough capital of their own, or are they dipping into customer funds?  Their statements have carefully avoided mentioning this issue.

If a real stockbroker lost funds like that, and became insolvent (debts > assets), they would have to stop operations immediately.  In some jurisdictions it is a felony for a broker to continue to accept funds once insolvent.  They don't get to "fix it later". That's because, historically, the temptation to fix it by speculating with customer funds has been a big problem.

With withdrawals working again, it's probably a good idea to get your assets out of Bitstamp. Don't use them as a wallet. Trade there if you like, but empty out your account when not actively trading.

Bitstamp now needs a full audit by an outside auditing firm.

That should be standard practice for any exchange, never use exchanges and online wallets or any public service for longterm storage, you do not have control over your coins there!

Happy to see they are back and being honest about the situation

That might be a possibility . To become solvent they would need to purchase 18K bitcoins, and I am not sure if they already did that or plan to do that .

What happens to the stolen 19,000 BTCs? Bitstamp has a roadmap to pay it off to the customers.
I think Bitstamp is finished. I personally would never transfer anything in there.

Agree, that's the missing part of the statement - how are they going to cover the lost funds? After all the shit from Mt Gox it would be nice if bitstamp were more transparent on this.

Although, if Pantera bailed them out, both sides may not be very keen on disclosing the details. And this part slightly suggest that this could be the case:


Hopefully they won't qualify for audit exemption in their 2nd year of trading.

I highly doubt they have the finances to buy it outright. I think they will have a plan where they slowly pays back the customers over time, or offers them a stake.

That was an incredible quick fix by Bitstamp. Good trustworthy company.

I really hope everything eventually works itself out with Bitstamp.
I would hate to see another black eye on the shiny face of BTC to start the new year.

Thats most likely what MtGox wanted to do. And then the price went ballistic.
Bitstamp doesnt didnt lose $5M; they lost a shitload of bitcoins and as long as they dont obtain them, their liability has no upper limit.

Would definitely withdraw asap if I were a current user...don't make the same mistake.  They're back up, but that still doesn't solve the fundamental problem of their losses or intended plan to make up for the stolen funds.  Seen this happen with coinex and cryptorush with a 're-opening.'  The lost funds are going to come out someone's pocket.

I have already withdraw all of my bitcoins succesfully

I was able to take everything out too.

Bitstamp is Silicon Valley, VC backed (Pantera). They were always going to come back and do things right. No chance of insolvency or funny business whatsoever.

This is great news!
Other members were saying bitstamp will be back but i wasn't so sure, I'm happy to be proved wrong in this case.
With Pantera behind them this does look like a safe company.

Ha. Most of us predict that Bitstamps will be back. Since it is back.. Bitcoin price gonna rise again.. :) .

So happy we have great exchanges in my country, nor verification time, 5 min entering any website no registration, payment and Bitcoins are send. It's perfect. Main reason is that one of our payment methods is instant and usually non-refundable so they know the funds are there, are immidiatly send to the exchange and with that confirmation the BTC gets transfered.

I did register today on Bitstamp for the. First time, but by the time I would be verified, allowed to buy and have funds deposited...

Not a big deal, they have so many coins sitting in the cold storage collecting dust. Their reserve ratio is much higher than any banks in the world, which typically have only 20% of customer funds at hand while still serve the customer for decades

That seldom works.  Many financial firms have tried that. Enron was a notable example of that going very wrong.

So, withdraw your funds from Bitstamp for a few months. If they're solvent, it won't hurt them a bit. If not...

Banks do not work that way. Banks make loans, which are assets to a bank. If you own a loan, you can sell it, which banks do. Loans plus cash plus capital must exceed deposits. Trouble can appear if a broad class of loans lose value, which is what happened in 2008.

Bitcoin exchanges have no secured loans as assets. They are not banks. They are not lending institutions. They have to have 100% of their deposits or they are insolvent.

What you said is academically true. But behind the scene, banks and exchanges work exactly the same way: Customers only play with numbers in their database until they withdraw real money. That's the reason M2 and M3 can be magnitudes higher than monetary base since they are only some numbers in bank's database

Bitcoin is hard assets, you could consider those hacked coins as a long term loan to hackers. Even so, bitstamp still have 80% of customer funds at hand. But in a bank, they never keep more than 40% of the funds at hand and their long term loan to business can not be easily liquidated. When a wave of customer withdraw hit, banks reserve will be drained quickly, and they have to borrow from other banks at the cost of interbank short term interest (LIBOR), but if majority of banks are facing such withdraw pressure, they will turn to FED asking for new base money injection

In bitcoin world there is no lender of last resort, so if everyone withdraw from bitstamp, they will have a bank run, but I think with more than 80% reserve ratio they are much safer than most of the banks

I remember that after 2011 MTGOX hack, they proved that they had 400K coins in a cold storage, and finally they lost 800K coins, so it is very likely that they were operating in a 50% reserve basis for almost 3 years

You are right to point that out because unlike financial institutions which have assets to back them up, I don't believe exchangers have that as well. I really hate to see them go but at least they must be given a chance to recover. I'm not sure how it is possible... probably when they start back operation and get things moving again like normal business day, this will allow them to secure funding either from investors or how. Or either way, maybe the loss for them is too small for them and they already have contingency plan in place. We just don't know that. So, it's a good idea not to leave large amount right now which goes the same for any other exchangers.

good news then

gotta say great job bitstamp, you guys have proven to be trustworthy, i hope the security is sound now.

Great! Bitstamp prove their job professionally and their trustworthy too.
I hope the price will rise! :D

Preev.com => 281.1 USD

Bitstamp.net => 278 USD

Google.com => 297.96 USD