the proof is here: Bitstamp lost 19K bitcoin = 5 mil usd do you think that there were safe? try to withdraw some money from them today, see if you can BUT there are safe, right?  Yes, they lost money. That doesn't mean they lost your money. They lost their hot wallet, but have much more funds in their cold wallet. They don't have any problem, paying back to their customer. If both cold and hot wallets are clients deposits, then yes, they've lost some small % of everyone's deposits. If they have sufficient reserves/source of funding to cover such loss, then it's no problem for the customers, BitStamp owners would be the only ones who got hit. But if they can't afford it - that's when the shit goes down. The cold wallet is not just clients deposit. It is also their revenue. Your statement would be true if they converted their revenue to fiat instantly. I don't see any evidence, that they can't afford it. No one knows (apart from BitStamp) what % of the cold wallet are their own funds. My guess is it's a tiny %. They do have to convert to fiat pretty often, they got bills, salaries, expenses to be paid (in fiat) on monthly basis. Also, they cannot just take the revenue (collected fees) and cover for the stolen deposits. They also need to cover their operating expenses with it. I don't know whether is bad or very bad for BitStamp, but I think in either way it's a problem they can manage with (if they have experienced,competent people on-board). Don't think we'll see Gox 2.0 here. |
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the proof is here: Bitstamp lost 19K bitcoin = 5 mil usd do you think that there were safe? try to withdraw some money from them today, see if you can BUT there are safe, right? Yes, they lost money. That doesn't mean they lost your money. They lost their hot wallet, but have much more funds in their cold wallet. They don't have any problem, paying back to their customer. If both cold and hot wallets are clients deposits, then yes, they've lost some small % of everyone's deposits. If they have sufficient reserves/source of funding to cover such loss, then it's no problem for the customers, BitStamp owners would be the only ones who got hit. But if they can't afford it - that's when the shit goes down. |
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how many "hacked" exchangers did that until now (seek an emergency funding) ? All of them had Limited companies (LTD) do not mix up the things. everything is possible in the Bitcoin industry. who will give them 5 MIL USD? it's not 500K...it's 5 MIL and the one who is lending,wants to be sure that he will get the money back. Bitstamp will never be what it was even they will cover the losses. So, they won't have the same profit not even near. nobody will lend them for a long period of time because this is a volatile market. you can never what it's bringing tomorrow. It's fair to assume that BitStamp is generating ~ $1m profit per year (after tax, salaries etc). The last thing you want is to close such business. If any of the shareholder's (say Pantera Venture Fund LP) can afford to provide such loan - they'd likely do so. They should get it back (+ interest) in 4-5 years. Even if later something goes wrong and BitStamp becomes insolvent, they won't lose the entire $5m, as they'd get paid proportionally along with other creditors from the remaining funds. So it's not as risky as it sounds. |
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How does USD stop people from hoarding?
Do you honestly need an explanation why stashing USD under your mattress is financially not a good idea? ...if inflationary currency is needed, then so be it, you can petition to change Bitcoin to inflationary. You can go ahead and push for your ideal model. It has nothing to do with PoS, since it can do both.
Bitcoin is also deflationary, how do you stop people from hoarding Bitcoin? How does PoW vs PoS have anything to do with this?
I'm not pushing for anything. I see some pros and cons with both PoS and PoW, while you seem to stuck with logic "PoW sucks because of mining costs, therefore PoS must be perfect". Lets take this scenario: 1) You have X PoW bitcoins, which is x% of total existing bitcoins. Since new coins are issued every day, if you want to maintain your x% you have to be active. You'd have to buy/mine/invest/scam/steal/gamble/create new BTC business/lend out etc. 2) You have X PoS bitcoins. To maintain your X% of total BTC, you have to do nothing, you just need to stake up all your coins in the wallet and don't use them. Which system promotes activity and which one discourages it? |
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I doubt they have $5 million of their own cash profits sitting around waiting to cover this loss.
it's no problem, indeed, the price only $260 now, 18,000 BTC just $4,680,000, i think this is a piece of cake for bitstamp How is it a piece of cake? A financial report of Bitstamp showed they had 800k profit for a large period of time. Not sure 4-5 million is coverable by them. may the speak of bitstamp ceo "the bulk of our bitcoin are in cold storage, and remain completely safe"https://twitter.com/nejc_kodric/status/552091195795845120It doesn't matter whether there's gazillion bitcoins safe in cold storage, these are all customers' deposits. If they've lost 19,000 BTC, they have to compensate for that. So the only question is whether they can afford it. OR if they want. The easiest way would be to close the biz, take the rest of the money and Bitcoin and done. a huge part of these 5 MIL are into their bank account. Who is interested to keep Bitcoin? They are interested in real cash, the one from bank. They lost some numbers on a screen but they own the money in bank. You don't have a clue how the Limited companies work, do you? Withdrawing money/bitcoins to their personal accounts would be like robbing the bank and showing your face + your id document to the security camera. The easiest way is not to close the biz, but to seek an emergency funding, preferably a loan from shareholders. |
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They say this is only a small fraction of their Bitcoin holdings:
"This breach represents a small fraction of Bitstamp’s total bitcoin reserves, the overwhelming majority of which are held in secure offline cold storage systems."
Doesn't matter. What's relevant is the amount lost and how are they going to repay that. Both cold and hot wallets are customers' deposit, BitStamp just holds those on their behalf and cannot dispose such funds at free will. |
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I doubt they have $5 million of their own cash profits sitting around waiting to cover this loss.
it's no problem, indeed, the price only $260 now, 18,000 BTC just $4,680,000, i think this is a piece of cake for bitstamp How is it a piece of cake? A financial report of Bitstamp showed they had 800k profit for a large period of time. Not sure 4-5 million is coverable by them. may the speak of bitstamp ceo "the bulk of our bitcoin are in cold storage, and remain completely safe"https://twitter.com/nejc_kodric/status/552091195795845120It doesn't matter whether there's gazillion bitcoins safe in cold storage, these are all customers' deposits. If they've lost 19,000 BTC, they have to compensate for that. So the only question is whether they can afford it. |
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Now bankrupt?
Don't think so. Even if they indeed lost 19000 BTC, the situation is manageable, if they have right people on-board. |
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If they indeed lost ~ 19,000 BTC, they're seriously fucked. There's no way they have enough own reserves to cover it. And I doubt they have insurance covering such event.
They can buy 19k btc with the fiat value , it is not an impossible thing to do.... (and maybe the price will raise a little). But I don't think they have ~ $5m reserves to do that. Their latest financial statements (for 2013) showed P&L reserves of ~ $0.8m. They'd likely need a loan for that, maybe from their shareholder Pantera Investments? |
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If they indeed lost ~ 19,000 BTC, they're seriously fucked. There's no way they have enough own reserves to cover it. And I doubt they have insurance covering such event.
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Hello.
Where I can buy Ethereum?
You can't. The initial pre-launch sale is closed. You have to wait till the launch, it should get on the exchanges soon after. I found on bittrex EtherCoin(ETC). Somebody knows what is it? It's a separate coin, definitely not Ether. |
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On bitstamp: "Customer deposits made prior to January 5th, 2015 9:00 UTC are fully covered by Bitstamp’s reserves. Deposits made to newly issued addresses provided after January 5th, 2015 9:00 UTC can be honored."
But if you look at the transactions of that possible hacked bitstamp address, the first transaction happened on January 4th, 2015 2:26:20 UTC. and the last transaction happens 2015-01-05 18:12:07, it is still accepting transactions after 9:00
Someone wasn't aware of what's going on and send to the old address maybe? |
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But that's one of the problems with PoS, it promotes hoarding and kills activity. Less activity leads to less adoption which leads to price decline.
Marketcap isn't everything, it's merely a snapshot of how much people are willing to pay for a coin and can change rather quickly. It's too early to judge that PoS kills activity. Quite the opposite: In Nxt, numbers of transactions per day steadily increased since July until today (around 3k per day now, which is not a lot compared to bitcoin, but still). I agree it's too early to make a judgement based on comparing any 2 coins. But you don't need empirical data to discuss differences between PoS/PoW designs. You only need common sense for that. NXT is probably not the best example in this case. Since it's non-inflationary, the only income you get is your share in tx fees (afaik), which atm are very insignificant. Therefore from the average holder's point of view - it's probably better to use it and keep it alive.Now what would happen if we switch BTC to PoS (with the same issuance model)? You think it would increase activity? You have @micky123 above saying he would stop investing. I know I wouldn't be keen on buying a coffee with my PoS coins and wouldn't touch my stash to tip or donate. If your coins generate you more coins - you don't want to spend them. Simple. Right now you have bitcoin hoarders, who (despite all the logic) wouldn't use their coins at all. If they're further incentivised to hoard - why would they change their approach? Stop spreading your false logic. USD has 1% interest on savings accounts, does it stop anyone from spending USD? . The goal of nxt forging is to have hundreds of nxt based businesses, all forging blocks to secure the network and protect their business with their running balance, rather then to have people getting rich off forging. For a smaller forger, forging allows you to have quite a few free transactions on the network. Did you basically repeat what I said to use as an argument against what I said? |
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Stop spreading your retarded logic. USD has 1% interest on savings accounts, does it stop anyone from spending USD?
Sunshine, let's keep some manners here, OK? 1% interest is less than inflation, does it pay to hold? Ever heard of negative interest rates? Why did they do that? http://www.bloombergview.com/quicktake/negative-interest-ratesAre you now saying that deflation is good for economy? Besides, USD is a legal tender, so people will be spending it even if they don't want to. You can't really compare it to un-established crypto-currency. Are you saying deflation is not good for economy?... Yes.
How is this relevant anyway? Proof of Stake can do both inflationary and deflationary, you can take your pick. For example, with Bitcoin, the PoS system can be implemented as deflationary, since Bitcoin is deflationary.
It's relevant to the "USD has 1% interest on savings accounts" argument you used. Again: If we switch bitcoin to pure PoS, without changing issuance model, what would prevent the majority from hoarding? It's a simple question. |
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Stop spreading your retarded logic. USD has 1% interest on savings accounts, does it stop anyone from spending USD?
Sunshine, let's keep some manners here, OK? 1% interest is less than inflation, does it pay to hold? Ever heard of negative interest rates? Why did they do that? http://www.bloombergview.com/quicktake/negative-interest-ratesAre you now saying that deflation is good for economy? Besides, USD is a legal tender, so people will be spending it even if they don't want to. You can't really compare it to un-established crypto-currency. |
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But that's one of the problems with PoS, it promotes hoarding and kills activity. Less activity leads to less adoption which leads to price decline.
Marketcap isn't everything, it's merely a snapshot of how much people are willing to pay for a coin and can change rather quickly. It's too early to judge that PoS kills activity. Quite the opposite: In Nxt, numbers of transactions per day steadily increased since July until today (around 3k per day now, which is not a lot compared to bitcoin, but still). I agree it's too early to make a judgement based on comparing any 2 coins. But you don't need empirical data to discuss differences between PoS/PoW designs. You only need common sense for that. NXT is probably not the best example in this case. Since it's non-inflationary, the only income you get is your share in tx fees (afaik), which atm are very insignificant. Therefore from the average holder's point of view - it's probably better to use it and keep it alive. Now what would happen if we switch BTC to PoS (with the same issuance model)? You think it would increase activity? You have @micky123 above saying he would stop investing. I know I wouldn't be keen on buying a coffee with my PoS coins and wouldn't touch my stash to tip or donate. If your coins generate you more coins - you don't want to spend them. Simple. Right now you have bitcoin hoarders, who (despite all the logic) wouldn't use their coins at all. If they're further incentivised to hoard - why would they change their approach? |
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i would love to have Bitcoin as POW + POS. That way my small stash of coins earn me something for keeping them. Investing BTC to earn some interest is just not possible in the current scenario, too many scammers and ponzi schemes around and i just dont feel safe investing atm. Currently, i earn some kind of interest by loaning BTC to people, but the inherent risks are just too high, there is always the nagging fear that they might run away with my BTC. If i was earning some interest for my coins, i would very gladly leave them in my wallet and get out of loan sharking, lol!  But that's one of the problems with PoS, it promotes hoarding and kills activity. Less activity leads to less adoption which leads to price decline. Why non-innovative, ever-inflationary DOGE has similar market cap to innovative and non-inflationary NXT? Because people use DOGE, they tip, they gamble, they spend - that makes it alive. ps I voted Yes, as I'd like the BTC devs to be more open-minded about implementing different protocol in the future, but I'm not convinced that PoS or PoW/PoS hybrid is the right solution. |
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Really? How do I get started with little or no money? I don't have to pay for power. Will that help?
If you've already bought miner and have free electricity then you have nothing to lose. If you need help with setting up, try posting in mining support section: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=40.0 |
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It is still out.!! No idea how long it's going to take.!! this sucks.!! I personally dont think it is a similar situation to mt.gox..! but anyways they should sort it out soon.!
That may not happen today, we're not talking about some minor bug here. They need to properly investigate the issue prior to re-opening. Thank you all for your patience, we are working diligently to restore service and hope to have an ETA later today. https://twitter.com/nejc_kodric/status/552090819659071488 |
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...
Most bets currently goes to Wilco with 256,590.
2nd is user 1335 with 112,967.
...
Wow, Wilco is betting 24/7, over x2 more than 2nd place. He must really want that free game  |
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