Bitcoin Forum

What will happen to the bitcoin price of BTC-e shuts down without a warning, and run with your coins?

Who are you going to sue?
Nobody knows which individuals or corporation is behind that russian site.

To da moon?

Right now all bitcoin exchanges should be considered as a huge risk.
The best thing to do is to withdraw all coins and fiat from all exchanges.

Lots of the people are learning what the term "unregulated" really means.

This whole gox story will lead to better, more professional and secure exchanges.

quit thinking in the old ways.....    brainwashed to think money is safe in a bank.....  so you think bitcoin is safe on an exchange?   


paper wallets....   flash drives.....      keep your own coins......   if you just leave them on an exchange.....   you get what you deserve

yes now we need some Central Authority which check these all things and some security to this btc because now many scams and few are also waiting for us

If it does, it would spell bad news for me since it's located in my country(hint: It's not Russia).

It would spell disaster for many more people.

Ukraine?
Bulgaria?
Romania?
White Russia?

Bulgaria is my guess.

Yeah just don't leave your coins on exchanges. That's an awful idea from the start.

I've read several people complaining about BTC

Topic: BTC-e withdrawal issues? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=459464.0

Ya, keep your coins off the exchanges. Not smart to leave them there. Keep them long enough there to trade and then transfer.

Why would you use btc-e there are many much better exchanges out there.
I pulled out of mt-gox and btc-e about a year ago seems to have been the right choice.

I'd say the biggest worry isn't the BTC, it's the fiat.
Sure, I can transfer my BTC off the exchange and send it back quickly if I want to trade. But if I don't want to have fiat on the exchange I have to withdraw them to my bank, which takes 2-3 days. Then, if the price of BTC goes down, I have to deposit the fiat again.. which takes 2-3 days. See the problem?

I have to have fiat on at least one exchange in order to trade efficiently.

Only keep what you can afford to lose on the exchanges

And only put into cryptocurrency what you can afford to lose, not everything you're worth.

What are some good exchanges for Europeans? Fast verifaction and sepa transfer a plus.

Kraken.

This discussion is no even close to actual topic. Everyone just have bad hangover, some even a bit too big and just need to blame the players , not the game. Most of times people lose money they blame companies or banks responsible for it. Not money itself. Bitcoin went a bit too decentralized and spreads around even some other cryptocurriencies too just get shut down. I'm not even sure if it is possible at this point and since it is heavily based on mathematic computing power then actual people, some kind of weird theories about any one holding it all together is rather ridiculus.

BTC-e is far less transparent than Mt.Gox ever was. The whole enterprise is a giant red flag on almost every level.

Some of us have watched in amazement as they've grown to the current trading volumes. Probably only due to lack of legitimate alternatives.

As one of those Goxxed please please learn from our mistakes. You don't have to learn the hard way.

The company(s) are known and registered at cyprus & england.
To know the owners will give you nothing except the company is a construct which
involves personal capital. Thats the sense to have a company: Its a legal entity.

But i agree: We need more transparency.
Even i do not care who operates/own the company who own btc-e.
I just need to know the company runs professional.

Hopefully we have in the near future a kind of audit - that would for example something
the bitcoin foundation would be good for. The exchanges pay the foundation a fee, they
make audits of the exchanges and control the hot/cold wallets and all.

+100

So we knew the owner of MtGox and his company's location exactly with all addresses etc.

Did that stop Karpeles from goxxxing us?

No.

Most likely, it certainly did not stop the US gov from pressuring Mark to succumb and hand over the BTC, then later desperately operating a fractional reserve, doing all kinds of shady things to get back some funds so the fractional reserve has enough of a fraction to keep operating.


Bitstamp we also know a few bits of the CEO and the location. But it did not stop them from freezing withdrawals some time ago, leaving everyone hanging in there without additional info.

Remember when the bitstamp price shoot over MtGox price for some time? Yep... that was exactly back then. Just like MtGox delaying withdrawals having an effect on the BTC price on gox, so did the maneuver Stamp pulled have an effect on the BTC price on Stamp, to the point where people trusted goxBTC/USD more than stampBTC/USD

Shortly after that, stamp pulled another two maneuvers, where the price would crash down, their service being unavailable to sell.
Again shortly after, when the price would rocket back up, they AGAIN had their service unavailable.

They got people to panic sell once they reopened, and later when it shoot up again, they got them to panic buy, after not allowing them to sell at the top, neither buy at the bottom, as they simply closed the service, most likely just pretending it was a DDoS

This to me screams manipulation.

If BTC-e can stand up working under DDoS, why cannot bistamp which has even more funds/volume?



So what do we learn of the gox?

In the bitcoin world, where any exchange at any time can claim they got "hacked" or some criminal somehow got hold of their keys to the cold storage, having the info of the owners + location of the exchange, won't protect you from them dry looting you.

It certainly won't protect the exchange from the US gov or other gov dry looting it.


So what exactly does protect us?

The only thing that protects us is the exchanges making way more money having their business run perfectly long term, than just running with the money.

This was in particular true for gox which had 80-90% of the market back then and has ever since looked like they are trying to ruin their own business deliberately.
This can only mean two things. Either the US gov stole their coins or they were paid assassins to harm BTC or a mix of the two.

If the exchanges wanted to make something on top, they could abuse the exchange powers and trade on their own behalf at zero fees or do some shady arbitrage by conspiring with another exchange or creating a second exchange they would pretend they are not related to.

So there is basically ZERO motive for the exchange to run with your money as they can extract way more of you using other means, including just operating the exchange in a honorable way.



BTC-e is swimming in money and bitcoins with very high volumes in the past. They certainly made back all the bitcoins and USD stored on the exchange already twice.
Why would they want to run with the money when they can profit much more from just operating the exchange properly?

The only reason we might lose our deposits would be for some governments to track them and shut them down which is what could happen to any other exchange as well. In fact, it is more likely to happen to any other exchange rather than btc-e as they can reopen being anonymous, while others will be shut for good.

edit: OR, as i mentioned above, the operators being motivated to harm BTC.

Satoshi nakamoto decided to remain anonymous for good reasons as well, not because he was shy of the public.



Is any exchange 100% safe?

NO exchange is 100% safe.

Especially not since no exchange EXCEPT btc-e has made a clear statement that they are NOT operating a fractional reserve and that all funds deposited in the exchange are fully backed up by real BTC/USD.

No audits made yet, even though audits won't protect us from what Karpeles pulled as they can simply claim they were hacked or scammed or lost their key or US gov took em and they are not allowed to talk etc.

The audits if frequent however, will certainly make it harder to pull such stunts in a believable way.


The ONLY safe storage for your coins is a cold wallet you created offline and know how to safely extract funds of into your hot wallet you use to buy stuff with.
One of the best devices coming out to make this easy for average joe to handle is the TREZOR device (at least as long as they stay true to their specifications)


So is everyone having their BTC on an exchange an idiot?

No, they are not. The majority is well aware of the high risks, which however comes with high rewards too if you know what you are doing. It's a calculated risk, and many have already quadruplet their initial investment, allowing them to pull out the initial investment while having 3x the initial investment still on the exchange.

While they are not doing it for altruistic reasons, this actually helps BTC gain value, allowing people to quickly interchange their BTC for FIAT if they choose to, as well as other businesses that do not want to keep BTC only, as it is not as widely accepted at the moment as needed for such businesses to operate solely on BTC.

Even the speculation itself gives BTC value as people are interested in investing in BTC just for that gamble that also includes some social factor.

Without the speculators, noone would be able to interchange BTC for USD/EUR/etc. Holders certainly do not do exchanges. Simply investing and holding the BTC does not work if noone sells.

So the speculators do in fact help this ecosystem, even if it is greed that propels their actions in most cases.

The speculators are shoving their own grave however, since their doings help make BTC more widely accepted, and soon enough, no one will need to interchange BTC for FIAT anymore, the price stabilizing in the process and there not being enough profit to be made for speculators anymore.
The exchanges will then operate on their own behalf and do their own trades, as only at zero fees exchanging BTC/USD will grant some profits still.


to finalize...

So reading the above you understand why some risk takers that are important for the BTC ecosystem choose to put their money into less than safe exchanges.

The only thing those speculators can do, is to guesstimate the risks of the exchanges available to them. It certainly would not be a good thing if all speculators had their funds in just one exchange that could gox us.
There should be at least 5-10 medium to large sized exchanges to make sure that when one goes down, not everything is lost.

It turns out, it is a good thing that not everyone trusts the same exchange.

..the end

Why Kraken? They will not say which countries they offer service in. Web site says most US states have no service, many countries have no service, also Germany.

Also verifaction takes week or more. Slow for questionable service.

Now they are working fast and verification need just 3 to 5 days and more countries added

Mainly because it has been reliable. It hardly goes down, doesn't lag and despite the support being super slow, coins eventually turn up.

I keep the minimum to trade there. You have to keep fiat anyway - its not worth withdrawing and depositing to trade.

Do you mean Mayzus? I thought it is a partner of btc-e but nothing to do with responsibility.

Then many people are gonna get Bankrupted or say Bitcoinrupted :P

Kraken still missing list of accepted countries. FAQ still say "most US states are like CA", so pre-verifaction only.

Documents required for verifaction also missing from FAQ.

Thanks for the paranoia, I just sold half my fiat that I have on BTCe for PPC and sent to cold storage.

People are reporting btc-e is down and they can't access accounts even if they're able to get to the site. Maybe you'll find the answer to your question soon, OP.

Works for me and the site shoutbox is not filled with complaints.

BTC-e is working, and it will work.

Until it doesnt... it will be to late to cash out your money or coins at that stage.