Definitely an interesting development. It doesn't say anything about any sort of possible involvement of Mark Karpeles willingly having cooperated. In that regard, two questions arise; [1] has Mark Kapeles any sort of involvement in this (in relation to BTC-E). [2] Mark Karpeles might turn out to be less of a harmful figure than everyone here has thought. I am fairly sure that he was aware of his exchange losing coins to what might turn out to be hackers, where from that point he was desperately trying to keep it away from the public in order to keep running his exchange. There is so much information popping up, where each time certain things might change your view on how things have been in the past. Everything needs to sink in properly.

The idea itself is nice at first glance, but it seems like it is something you guys came up with after a night drinking. How will that work out in terms of funds being stored? Who stores and has access to the funds? Have you thought about a scenario where one of your friends may run off with the funds? Seriously, no matter how well you think you know your friends and family, there is always a possibility where they will just steal the funds. Money makes even friends and family do things you never expected from them. If you ever going to proceed with this, at least make sure you make use of multisig. Google it.

Perhaps after we know how things will play out with the hard fork later this year. As long as that isn't clear, I don't think we're ready for a price in that direction. As kakmakr also pointed at, we also have to see what's going to happen with the BTC-E funds. Right now there isn't anything known in terms of who's in control of these coins, and what will happen if they are still in control of the co owner. It's easy for that person just to run off with a huge load of coins and then hide somewhere, unless he's honestly looking to reopen that exchange again. I am sure he has made thousands of Bitcoins already, alongside millions in funds throughout the years - it would be a much appreciated gesture if he opened the exange just for the purpose of allowing people to withdraw at least their crypto funds. Everything better than having these crypto funds being auctioned off to fill the pockets of the government.

Even though it may seem so, I still haven't found any sort of article explicitly stating that it is in fact BTC-E that has been used for said accusations. I am however glad that the server(s) haven't (at least, it seems so) been compromised by the authorities. In terms of people's funds, if the authorities seized everything related to BTC-E, people will have a very hard time seeing even a penny back. Investigation alone could take years due to the size of this 'scandal', and another thing, if people will be offered an opportunity to withdraw their funds, they will likely have to fully verify themselves in order to get back what is theirs. That way the authorities can precisely see who and what sort of people are involved in using this exchange.

Edit; it seems that after reading the latest articles BTC-E does indeed get mentioned.

Bitcoin will always recover, but the fud and trolling and other drama will never stop. At this point I don't think any trader here even wants it to stop, as this is what gets the market to move big time. Even non traders benefit from these price swings as they are being presented a decent opportunity to buy at lower levels. Regarding after the 1st of August, even after that date things will not settle as we then have to hard fork to mess things up. It may take three months before the hard fork is supposed to kick in, but time moves quick, don't underestimate its potential negative effect on the market.

In comparison to how Bitcoin is operating right now, there is no such a thing as severly limited when it comes to the Lightning Network. However, if we look at one of the major points that might potentially be seen as a somewhat limiting factor, then it will be the block size of Bitcoin. LN requires a decent amount of block space, especially if its usage increases significantly globally. Also take into consideration that the general demand for block space has been growing exceptionally throughout the years. In that regard, larger blocks is definitely a must in order to properly run LN. Regarding the fees, since transactions will be focused off-chain, you'll be enjoying extremely cheap transactions. Exactly this is the reason LN mostly gets pointed at as being an ultimate implementation to allow micro transactions to take place. That being said, at this point we're far, far away from seeing LN become operational.

That's pretty much a normal thing nowadays, since every event with a potentially negative tint may be used in an attempt to get the price to tank. If a new Twitter statement comes through in the coming hours, we'll see the fud train lose steam, but if we don't happen to see any sort of statement, expect the fud to increase a notch or two. I must point out that I start to feel slightly worried with quite some funds sitting in my account there. I am seriously glad that I haven't made any more BTC deposits, as I was initially planning to do. As said before in this thread, as long as there isn't an FBI warning/notification on the front page, things should be fine (at least, I hope so).

Even if exchanges do promise you that you will get what belongs to you, you shouldn't take that for granted. After all, exchanges may change from standpoint at the time something is happening that they haven't seen coming. If you proceed to leave your coins there anyway, despite all the warnings and statements from the exchanges themselves, you should not complain when things don't play out as you might have expected. Either way, your Bitcoins will remain safe, you just risk losing the potentially free candy.

In my situation, I am a trader, which will basically mean that I leave an x number of coins on-exchange in order to do some trading. I fully accept that I may not end up getting the free candy (the alt) in case of a chain split. Other than that, I will make sure that I have less coins than usual on-exchange (likely in the range of 50% of what I normally would trade with).

If it really wasn't his own decision to close its doors, it means that they (government affiliated agencies) will chase down other mixers as well, and thus we'll likely see other mixing services follow the same route in the fortcoming months/years. At the end, this isn't 2012/2013 anymore, where everything was still more or less a joke in every aspect. With all sorts of crypto related regulations in place, and what is left to be implemented in the forthcoming years, things are becoming a whole lot more serious. Governments won't sit back endlessly looking at how Bitcoin is growing larger and larger. If you look at the large number of coins that went through Bitmixer last year (around 1M BTC), you'll see how much demand there is for an extra layer of privacy that mixing services provide.

People continue to solely focus on the 1st of August. We're not done with the fud machine until it's clear how things will be just before the hard fork is going to kick in. It's not for certain yet that we are going to see a hard fork just because it is part of the SW2X proposal. Funny thing however is that when the hard fork will kick in like it should, people will panic, and when the hard fork doesn't kick in for whatever reason, people will panic too. In that regard, I by that time expect even more turmoil than we have seen already.

Basically that. I highly doubt that he is ever going to trade 1BTC for 3BCC, unless it will be financially speaking rewarding enough for him, but then people would do it themselves. BCC will be nothing more than an altcoin that at first will gain much attention, but will get dumped down due to people cashing out their free coins. After all the initial dumping BCC may get pumped, but after a month or two, perhaps three, the market will sink to the bottom like a large piece of rock - especially when Bitcoin starts rushing up again.

At least I'm glad that you realize that your stupid theory is just a random bit of gibberish. You just try to link one event with another event for trolling purposes. If the people behind BTC-E would pull off an inside theft, they would have gone a whole different way (i.e. a non obvious way). It doesn't even make sense to run off with an x amount of coins, while these days are the most profitable days for basically ANY exchange in terms of fee income. They were easily making $200K worth of fee income, per day! What idiot would choose to run off?

Well, some trades are coming through over at xbtce.com. Last trade 08:44:32 @ $2440.8 - that means the entire platform isn't completely down. After thinking for a while, it might be that they noticed an intruder within their system, and for that reason decided to shut down their platform till it's known how it got in. If that's really the case, they will surely not share that with the outside world as that would be a guarantee for panic. I however would have liked them to just offer a better form of communication - last statement from their twitter account dates back from 12 hours ago.

Nah. The only sort of 'use case' this coin will experience is all speculative. If you closely look at how much hate is flowing towards Jihad Wu & Co (rightfully so), you'll understand that people will literally sh!t on that coin. It will be nothing more than one of the plenty of pump and dump coins that the altcoin market has. I can see a lot people converting their coins at the very first stage, which obviously will affect the price of BCC negatively. Some people will prefer to wait a while for everything to calm down, in the hope that this coin gets pumped, and then they will convert their BCC coins to Bitcoin. I think I will follow the latter route. But as you also pointed out, there is no way to tell what is going to happen, so we'll be better off waiting for what's going to happen.

Bitmixer was a true asset for the entire Bitcoin community. Every time I withdrew coins from an exchange to be sent to my cold wallets, I have let them go through Bitmixer to get 'unmarked' coins in return. The reason from Bitmixer to close its doors is very much debatable, but it's pointless to speculate about what might or might not have pushed them to stop. We have to adapt to the situation by looking for alternatives, and the first next time that I need to mix some of my coins, I will put ChipMixer to the test. Reading through what kind of features it offers, it greatly exceeds that what Bitmixer had to offer. At least we're not going backwards.

I understand the fear when exchanges go down, but I don't believe this has anything to do with a hack. It might be them having messed up something when preparing for a possible split scenario, or they were expanding their server base to offer people a better overall trading experience. I have been using this exchange since early 2013, and have never had any doubts about their credibility, even though they remain quite in the background compared to other exchanges. I currently have +$10,000 in fiat and +5BTC sitting in my account there. I am however a bit frustrated that I can't buy at these lower levels.

If there will be no chain split, which at this point no one here can say anything about, we'll be heading towards the $4000 level next month. If a chain split does turn out to happen, then we'll be experiencing some interesting weeks. I have no doubt that we'll dive below the $2000 level again in that scenario. It's depressing that we have to deal with certain figures that are only out to fill their own pockets, and to nurse their hunger for control. Yes, I am referring to Jihad Wu & Co. On the other hand, other miners can be blamed as well for what we are experiencing. Segwit could have already been fully operational.

People will always continue to hold their coins - it has been like that since the very beginning, and it will continue to stretch out in the forthcoming years. In general, coins will become less affordable as per whole unit price (yes, I know people can buy fractions), and that will give people an extra stimulance to keep holding. People realize that if they spend or sell their coins, they might end up having to buy their coins back at higher levels.

Correct. People keep focusing on decentralized exchanges, but they don't realize that there is no way they will be trading in the same way, as centralized exchanges allow them to trade. In case of Bitcoin, it's even worse due to its confirmations, that even transactions with a well sized fee might take 30-40 minuts to confirm. It gets the job done, but don't tell me how. Bitsquare for example offers a wide variety of fiat related payment options, but this puts its decentralized aspect to waste. Fiat is just impossible to incorporate into their platforms in a totally decentralized way. Tether is also no option since this token has [1] lost its purpose of maintaining a 1:1 value with the USD, and [2] it's insanely centralized.

I seriously don't mind Bitcoin itself, or mixing services being used in combination with illicit activities. Why do I not mind? Because there is nothing that you can do about it. If we are going to have moral problems because criminals are making use of the same tools that we use, what on this planet is there left for us (non criminals) to use? People should seriously drop this nonsense and mind their own business.