Bitcoin Forum

BTC-E users like me are last in priority line.

That's where a main part of our money will go to:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/russian-national-and-bitcoin-exchange-charged-21-count-indictment-operating-alleged

Next on the line are the MtGox victims.

I guess after USGov got paid, there won't be a Satoshi left for the rest.


edit: They are not coming back in 5 - 10 days, either. Admins will be trying to run as fast as they can.

I haven't got any money in there but I really hope people don't get screwed over again here. I love bitcoin bit this is one of the biggest negatives about it. Sad that these kind of ass holes can do this. 

I don't know how many people used their real information for registering account on BTC-E, since majority used the exchange because of its lack of AML/KYC policies. Tough to claim your funds and prove your fund source to begin with, even if there were any money left for the victims.

So sad to see this kind of thing happening again in the btc world. The alleged admin of BTC-e,  Alexander Vinnik seems to have been running a lot of shady activities behind the scenes.

Yes. And also, nobody knows exactly who owns BTC-E - was it Vinnik, or was it friends of his. And where are they moving the servers? No-one knows which means the ability of customers to get their coins is precisely zilch.

Did not know btc-e had fallen. That's a big down. Seems like no site is 100% safe in bitcoin and everything can go like the wind by tomorrow. Best is not having all the eggs in one and the same basket, as always.

So I remain loyal to bitcoin, and not amenable to any panic. Any panic is stress to the body and it causes people to make mistakes. I guess the money did not return, but treat this not as loss but as gain experience for the money. Perhaps this experience will help to save your money in the future.

it doesn't look like they have control of the btc-e servers. i assume they can raid this guy's personal accounts.

i'd hold on fire on predicting whether no one's getting money back. it's still possible.

This is sad indeed. Very sad for those who hold coins there, it's always said not to hold coins on the exchanges and I am so glad had moved my coins from the exchanges, before also so many times the exchanges have messed up and it's the people who loose their hard earned coins. I hope not many people have lost their coins as it would be a big loss to them

That what always happens when court charge organization (or the court is admitting bankrupcy of organisation). Fees connected with a trial will always be in prioriy so the court would be able to get payed for its service (aren't they getting salaries?). Victims are usualy the last ones to get payed. The system works to punish the "criminals" not to help victims.

So it is already confirmed that BTC-e so called unscheduled maintenance was in fact government seizing the server?

I also don't used BTC-e long before but I'm also saddened for those who have coins stash in them. At least most of the members here should have moved their coins already before of the looming hard fork and the advised what already put into place here weeks ago. It also coincide with our beloved bitmixer.io closing down its services so I'm assuming the government is really clamping down any illegal activities involving bitcoins. I personally believe that BTC-e will be having a hard time to recover or won't be back in business for the next 2 years because of this. I'm just pretty disappointed on what's going on with the crypto world right now.

sad the fund gonna gone, so where the coin and all other dollar go ? going into that greedy government again ? ahh this is shit

Strange, before some time i was almost certain that they are best exchange BTC -USD for Europe. We really need decentralization, and exchanges must not hold your private keys.. Now we can be sure that it is just matter of time when you will be robbed when you are using such exchanges. Who is next? :(

I am probably going to loose 450 bucks or so.
I learned not to keep large balances in any exchange.
BTC-E has been very very good to me, and I will gladly let them HAVE that 450 bucks, if they will ask, otherwise, if I loose it, then so what?
Thanks BTC-E, you have been appreciated, greatly.
You have my support, although I think your lawyers have a great argument for you.

Cryptsy, if you take todays figures, would owe me millions. At the very least hundreds of thousands.
They took me for 4 G's, in may forms of coins, and may every bird that lives, shit on their heads, collectively.
I hope they are buried in jail and by jail time.

Yesterday we saw tweet about maintenance on btc-e. And now website is down. I think that this story will be long, because investigations about money laundering, illegal money movement and etc requires much time.
If people will not get their money back, there will be many victims. Btc-e was old, popular and reputable exchange which had huge number of users.

Would be pretty stupid if the government just took peoples money.  Legitimately invested and held.  It's not like people were using BTC-E for exclusively illegal activities most people were legit.  It's a disheartening situation.  I didn't have any crypto on BTC-E, but my heart goes out to those who do

Stolen Bitcoin-s now splitting on 20 BTC wallets.
Some BTC sending on randomly exist legit addresses.

The issue is mtGox users have had their money taken for years. Will it even be returned? If so, how will this process occur.

I'm sure many people have left the crypto community for life because large amount of money was stolen from them and they don't even know about this news.

Dude, you just made me realize we can have gifs as avatars. Dammit.

Anyway, this money is evidence. As this case isnt going to wrap up for at least two years minimum, the funds will sit in a government wallet til they reach a verdict. then important people, businesses and government agencies that can levy fines will have their fill; the rest will be auctioned. MT Gox users wont see a cent of this unless Kraken (I think they are managing the Mt Gox claim) has aggressive lawyers that get out there and try to earmark the funds for the claimants. But the basis of the arrest was that these coins are part of illegal activity, at least some of them. this will be the excuse to drag it out forever, and deny legitimate users their funds.  think of the people on silk road that were buying legal shit; they didnt get their money back when it was all said and done.

thats right, this is not the first time the btc company had fallen, all we need to do is to learn how to anticipate all the possibility that will happen to our btc by keep it to save place. there's a lot of topic that explain how to keep your btc safe ini this forum. We know the risk of investring our money in bitcoin, and we now bitcoin have many trials since the first time. and we still believe that bitcoin would be the future of currency in the world.

Play at your own risk is definitely the game here, sadly nothing is 100% safe when it comes to Bitcoin.

Good lesson to keep everything and keep all your private keys to yourself.  Only keep coins on an exchange you plan to exchange.

Be aware that the BTC-e law enforcement, repressive police and military force.
She lowered all the resources of the most powerful Nations in the world.

This is not the situation - when You are in the lane bullies with a knife attacked.
They destroyed Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi and Noriega.
And now, to panic, to hope and demand that the market has recovered in 3 days ?

We must give them time and see what happens.
If they can withstand this blow. To restore your capability. To continue the work.
While being in conflict with the most powerful state in the world?

This exchange will only gain popularity and can only Pat!
And the situation will be quite interesting to develop further.

If the exchange will continue to work at us will be probably the first totally dependent exchanger.
In fact, we encountered the first way that cryptocurrency has become totally dependent and not controlled by the government!

Any freedom requires sacrifice!
Freedom of circulation of capital just can't be achieved.
The government will certainly resist. And use in this fight, and the police and military.

So that the struggle began. Will see how it end!

The forfeiture laws in the USA will most probably be applied and most of that money will go to the US government. They might help some of the victims in the MtGox hack, but it will only be a small percentage of their losses. < most of that money would be gone >

The US law enforcement agencies have a reputation that they misuse their powers, when raids are done and legitimate money will also end up in their pockets. < even if you can produce proof that it was legitimate > 

The coins will be joining together at one point and one day the guy wants to actually buy something with it. If criminals understood the concept of an open ledger, they would be using another currency instead of Bitcoin. If they understood PRISM, they would completely avoid computers for criminal activity.

It's bullshit that mt gox victims would be first in line over people that had funds there...

The coins of customers are not the property of btc-e and therefore should not be part of their assests that determines how much money they have to pay in fines etc.

That said, I'm afraid for my coins on there. Hopefully altcoins will get special treatment..

u.s should have no control of other countries business, and should not let u.s. take the money and put them into there own pockets.

all law enforcement has right now is the domain name. they'll probably get the bank accounts. it's quite possible all the crypto remains untouched. we don't know who else other than the guy arrested has access to it.

But given these problems what incentive do the owners of BTC-E have to give users their money back? Especially if they are arrested and refuse to cooperate on private keys etc.

If the government successfully manages to retrieve the crypto I think they will make an effort to pay everyone back assuming there are funds to cover it.

No, the US government is probably not going to give the funds back. The depositors of BTC-e are considered unsecured creditors. Unsecured creditors are next to last in line when a company is forced to liquidate. Only the actual owners/investors of the liquidated company are behind unsecured creditors, when dividing up the proceeds of the liquidation. Only hope for depositors is if somehow BTC-e's assets are worth more than the $110M civil penalty, any additional criminal fines, lawyers fees, restitution etc etc etc. Maybe the company can get good legal representation and reverse the civil fine and get acquittals or a sweetheart plea deal, but I doubt it.

Its so unfortunate that this have to happened and people get to lose their money without any form of compensation and this is what will continue to happen without regulation which cannot happen in the case of banks at least the promoters would have kept quite an amount of money as deposit and at the same time insuring depositors funds. Aside that, I am equally happy but part of what should be in that charges is betrayal of Trust.

The BTC-E website is currently down, but the exchange claims this is due to unscheduled maintenance. “Will keep you updated. Sorry for the inconvenience,” it tweeted in English on July 25. On July 26, as news of Vinnik’s arrest broke, it tweeted in Russian that it expected to be up and running again within 10 days.  ;D ;D

its not coming back, the US gov got them. btc-e users will be the last people to receive any funds if any are left after all other party's have been paid restitution, providing they can prove they have a legitimate claim. expect this to take years...

This is why I don't really trust any exchanges because anytime they will shut its door leaving all the investor or users on its platforms behind without a single cent to their money which are being store on it. Its really sad to know for those people who are victimized again on this matter. They should really consider those coins as lost because owners will definitely do the best as they can to secure those bitcoin or money.

Many people have said that not 100% safe trading in some exchangers. Even a bad idea if you last too long your money there. Because we do not know what will happen in that exchanger in the future. This case can be taken as an example.

use shady exchanges and expect shady outcomes.

It's on Youtube and reddit now.

Clear browser and use a proxy and you can see on website. Website domain has been changed and seized by big brother. Maybe we might have a chance but with over 500,000 users I think it will be a long wait. I have a MTGOX claim that waiting for payment as well.

http://imgur.com/EqnleRe

or:

Only play with money that you can afford to lose

or:

Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

 8)

Is there any evidence that the US authorities were able to seize any funds? It's really weird that there was no mention of this in the press releases. Usually that's the headliner. I think they expected to seize a lot of funds, and came up mostly empty-handed. Remote servers and Mongolian bank accounts ftw! Unfortunately, this helps the BTC-e owners, but not necessarily the customers. The FBI basically said to the owners, "We are predators and you are prey" so the owners will probably just go into hiding. I sure would. Who wants to risk spending the next 55 years (or whatever term) in US prison? :-\

When pressured. Always have to answer.
https://russian.rt.com/world/article/413476-rossiya-ssha-sankcii-dacha-otvet (https://russian.rt.com/world/article/413476-rossiya-ssha-sankcii-dacha-otvet)

Well, we can track BTC-e wallet here: https://www.walletexplorer.com/wallet/BTC-e.com although maybe there are other wallets. As you can see, it wasn't emptied yet, and that would be the first move of anyone who got access to it, because it's possible that there are some other persons out there with access to this wallet (partners of Vinnik, his backup, other trusted persons, etc.).
Same goes for BTC-e ETH wallet: https://etherscan.io/address/0x91337a300e0361bddb2e377dd4e88ccb7796663d
So, there's some chance that all the crypto of BTC-e won't get seized and will be lost forever or will get moved to hands of some new people (other than Vinnik), who might or might not return it to the original owners.
But it shouldn't be hard for the US government to seize fiat funds, especially in USD.

Edit: BTC-e ETH wallet got emptied: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xa7e60cc4b56c81dc148e6b3a025cad949828dfb6b36801e5a6b42a9a94f5e33a

This is surely a drawback for bitcoin and another reason why many experts keep telling people no to store their funds on exchanges , getting hacked is a different thing but now we see a new trend of exchanges stealing their own users money. Yobit also has many scam accusations against not saying they can do the same thing btc-e did but beware users please don't store your funds on exchanges amd try to avoid trading on sites with poor support like yobit.

As of now the most recent transaction shows ETH Balance:   485,705.46805023 Ether ( USD Value: $97,369,375.18 (@ $200.47/ETH)) has been MOVED to another wallet 7 hours ago from btc-e ether wallet so ....((

Hello,
I can't believe this has happened... I had US$80,000 on that exchange, I didn't know it was dodgy but very angry with myself now for not doing more research. I had just sold my 30 BTC, was planning to buy cheaper then the site closed. I'm so stressed out, I feel like my heart is about to have an attack... I'm a mum with 2 young kids, don't earn much I was going to buy a house with this bitcoin money can't believe this.....
If anybody knows anyone that can help to get money back please contact me, I literally feel sick and am very very upset.
S

I'm sorry to hear that dude. That is a lot of money just sitting in an exchange. Looks like this is your life sayings. Maybe you want to follow this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1934630.0

The guy has like $25000 in BTC-e and he said that he is hiring a lawyer to help him recover his funds. Goodluck.

I had some bitcoins and litecoins on btc-e a few years ago. I'm glad I moved them off. I now use poloniex and so far so good but you never know with these exchanges. The best thing is to put most of your coins off an exchange for safe keeping. Only use exchanges for active trading and be aware of complaints about any exchange.

Many people have not used their real identities for creating accounts. I dont think bitcoin will just run away with all the money. Some people have invested lacs of ruppes in bitcoins and still trust in bitcoin including me. I trust a lot in bitcoin. Bitcoin is my faith. Its sad to read such news but according to me, bitcoin will not give huge losses.

Your money is gone and every PM regarding help to get your money back is a scam.

its sadly when i heard that btc-e has got problem and user can not get their money back. one market is down forever without giving compensation for the members. i only hope that in future, there will be no other market that can not give protection for the members but i know its impossible because we work in online so we can not do anything but maybe we can hire laywer like what others said and maybe we can solve our problem with the exchange.

that's why i never want to keep my money so long in exchange site, it's so risky, we never know what will happens next hour, hacking can be happen anytime. But for this case, i think it's 100% BTC-E their own fault, they should be ready for this.

I am in exactly the same position as you!
All our savings for our sons education and future were there too.
I like you had traded back to fiat in anticipation of a dip which I was expecting.
I was going to buy back at the bottom and then move everything to cold storage!
I didnt know that there was anything dodgy with the exchange and the anonimity thing never occurred to me. I funded my wallet through my bank and had provided all the ID documents required. I didnt feel any need to hide my identity and was only doing ligitimate trades!
I completely empathise with you :(

A guy managed to withdraw his money before blocking BTC-e. if anyone interested: https://en.crimerussia.com/gromkie-dela/founders-of-btc-e-bitcoin-exchange-allegedly-linked-with-russian-hacker-vinnik-will-return-money-to-/

When it comes on bad experience i would really hands down on yobit exchange. Many unforgetable moments on there regarding on their service which do really suck. Bad support, usually experience downtimes, problems on their withdrawals and deposits and their shady/rigged dice games and Even those ICOs been broadcast. Storing funds on exchanges is not really a wise thing to do.

Couple notes:

1) The remaining staff / admins / owners of BTC-e are surely located in countries with no extradition laws to the USA.  Considering the Russian roots of the site, they're likely in Russia.  They know they will never be able to travel to countries which allow extradition to the USA.  They will also likely avoid airlines from countries with extradition laws to the USA.  Ultimately, these guys probably already did that before, because I'm sure they are well aware of what happened with Liberty Reserve.

2) If they can bring their service online from Russia, without leaving it vulnerable to another takedown, they will.  BTC-e is a brand name in the Bitcoin exchange game.  Their access to USD may be severely limited, but guess what, so is Bitfinex.  They literally can't send or receive wires, and they are still operating a Bitcoin exchange with considerable volume.  BTC-e will need to find a way to host the service, provide some sort of fiat integration (Perfect Money, OKPay, etc.)  Just something that lets their users kick the can down the road essentially.  I'm sure they'll figure something out.  Worst case scenario they use Tether.

3) There is no "greater danger" to them by continuing to run the exchange.  They already know the danger.  Enter US soil, or US extradition-friendly soil, and they're fucked.  They have targets on their back regardless of whether the exchange ever opens again.  So, opening and continuing the exchange actually creates no added risk to them.  The main risks and challenges on reopening the exchange will be that other companies will not want to do business with them.  Other companies will not want to take the risk of dealing with BTC-e.

4) The owners / admins have been running this exchange for 6+ years.  This is their life.  It's what gives them purpose and their identity.  It's not easy to just walk away from such a situation.  And to walk away defeated like they are right now, and ruin their own reputation, may not be worth the money they gain from such a thing.  If they believe they can reopen the exchange, even though it may eat into their capital at the beginning, they know longer term the profitability of running their business.  Realistically, when you run a Bitcoin exchange you can find many ways to make money.  You have control over a significant portion of the crypto eco-system.  A few insider trades a month, or integrating a new ICO on your exchange for some kickbacks, and you've made a mint.  Money shouldn't really be a problem for these guys if they reopen the exchange, even if the FBI seized a lot of funds.  It may not be super ethical, but what do people expect?

5) If the owners / admins do not want to reopen BTC-e for whatever reason, then I don't see them reimbursing anybody.  At that point, these crypto cowboys will just take whatever funds remain and fade into the abyss.  They will certainly have enough funds stored away on cold wallets / personal wallets to live a life of luxury, albeit constrained to a limited area in the globe.  At that point we should point out their lack of honesty, acknowledge that they have stolen our funds, and move on with our lives. 

In conclusion, I think there is a good chance BTC-e reopens with customer deposits intact.  There's a variety of ways they could socialize losses or lock in balances while regaining enough funds to repay customers.  It will come down to these people personally.  Do they have the drive to reopen the exchange?  If they do, then they can.  And it would regain popularity, just as Bitfinex did after their fiasco in 2016.

Hopefully you will get your money back. We will wait and see how this unfolds. In the meantime, to all readers: take your coins out of the exchanges ASAP. Don't leave them in. You've been warned again and again.

If you put all of your eggs in one basket then it suddenly fall down then you will really end up crying for sure that's why its not really a wise move on securing funds or putting on one exchange because the risk is really been always there. If you do lose it all in a flash then recovery would really takes time compared on having some back up plans on other sources since you still have funds left would really help you out to stand up again inspite of loss.

Looks like the Texan has returned from the grave: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1286823.0

The other reason base on my opinions are the money on BTC-e was gone even it is still available will not be paid to BTC-e users
because the bitcoins and all of the funds will be confiscated by the police,
That is why many people who said that never put the funds for long time on the exchangers and always making investment with the amount of funds that can be accepted to losing the money.

$10,000 REWARD AND BOUNTY OUT

https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@thejamesfund/usd10-000-reward-bounty-or-split-among-individual-s-in-helping-me-blasting-btc-e-aka-wex-nz-info-below

Wait... Bitcoin is a NSA project and they need to use a russian bulgarian exchange to track users??? Makes no sense, but hey... thinking is free