Bitcoin Forum

did britcoin just drop off the net? I was using it this morning but its just turned into a parking page in the last few minutes...!

Yeap, I just saw that parking page too. The one with the girl with backpack.

It was up and down last night too. This is not looking good.

It could just be a routing issue

Pinging www.britcoin.co.uk [69.64.147.243] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 4.79.170.2: Destination net unreachable.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Or.. could be something has gone screwy with the DNS

 Relevant dates:
         Registered on: 17-Mar-2011
         Renewal date:  17-Mar-2013
         Last updated:  08-Jun-2011

Now registered to someone not in the UK? (I was sure that the owner of britcoin was uk based...)

Britcoin IS UK-based as you can do an instant-bank transfer to top up your account.

Could this be a DDoS attack? Or simply because loads of people are accessing the site?

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask but what's the best/easiest route for someone in the UK to get started with bitcoins?

I read about bitcoin when they were like $1 but never got into it because the whole buying process seemed shady & not UK-friendly... and now feel a bit of a fool. Wouldn't mind buying a few even now but still find the whole process pretty difficult.

I'm guessing this britcoin thing was/is the way to go? What are the alternatives? Is there a thread on this site somewhere with an FAQ or maybe just list of ways to buy easily from the UK?

The domain has been hijacked.  The server is still available, but you'll have to do a bit of work.  Here's a description of what I did, and what you should do to get in.

I went to netcraft and typed in britcoin.co.uk.  That got me the IP address as of an hour ago, 75.101.180.111

I wrote this in a (DOS line endings) file:


And ran this:


That got me a reasonable HTTP response, redirecting me to https://britcoin.co.uk.  Of course that redirect doesn't work because the domain is busted.  So, I went to https://75.101.180.111/ and got most of the Britcoin site.

I couldn't log in as yet, because Google's openID implementation gives back a different ID based on the referer address in the OpenID request.

It's all looking good then.  The solution is simply to fake the DNS record that you need.

Go to your /etc/hosts file and add this line:


Everything should then work as normal.

Getting you access to your coins and cash has got to be worth a tip right?  ;)  5% of what I saved you to the address below too cheeky?  Okay, let's call it a beer if we ever meet.

See the thread starting here (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=4984.msg184078#msg184078) for more details.

does that hosts change work, realnowhereman?
because i have muchlots tied up in britcoin :(

Yes, it works, and the site is still fully functional.

Strange days...

Yes.  I'm in and working as normal.

Looks like someone beat me to the solution over in that other thread though :-)

Could this fix be confusing things on genjix's end if he's trying to sort some problem out?

His problems are with his domain; there's not much can be done on the actual server hosting britcoin.

In fact, given how hard it is to get domains back, I suspect that britcoin.co.uk is going to be gone forever.  His best bet will be to register a new domain and get the word out fast.

And then take better care of it... like say writing "domain expires" in his diary.

Domain was due to expire 17 March 2013. It's records have been "updated" today.

Someone has changed the nameservers associated with the domain, presumably fraudulently, presumably for their own gain.

Well that's entirely forgiveable.  No one can be held responsible for that.

Best of luck to the owner getting his domain back.

Best thing we can all do now is tell everyone who might be a user of britcoin but not a member of these forums that there is nothing to panic about.  Their money is safe; the site will come back in time.

Thanks to the dude who gave the ip address for the Britcoin site. It's worked well for me too.

Panic over...

See http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=4984.msg184343#msg184343 (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=4984.msg184343#msg184343)

We are really sorry for these delays. We are working full time to get this fixed. We have just moved servers and in the future we will be moving bank accounts. Although we are having some delays now, these switches are all being done to increase site security and to be able to seemlessly scale with future volume.

Thank you for your patience.

better switch to namecoin domains...

Britcoin is coming back up after a lot of testing. Also, the mininum transaction level will be siginifantly lowered in a matter of minutes. The bids will be matching imminently as well.

We will be daily processing withdaws and deposits from now on.

gone again?

Up again