Hello,

Could you please state your account name in BitCoin7.com in an e-mail to info@bitcoin7.com. After the transition to the new bank we have been checking the old bank (in Bulgaria) every day for late transfers. If we have received it, it is credited to your account. Just to make sure that everything is ok and that nothing is wrong please state all of the details about your transfer in an e-mail to us.

The other 3 markets were closed due to very low activity.

We now have a new management and we are working on major improvements in our service, one of which is the new bank, which is indeed in the SEPA zone.

We have started correcting our faults and are making good progress eliminating all problems we have had in the past. Now we are working on new improvements.

I want to assure you, alpha42, that your funds will not be lost.

Hello,

The reason for the delay that we have been experiencing is that because of a few people that have made an attempt to fraud us by recalling their transfer after having used the money to purchase BTCs and than withdrew them.Considering this our bank stopped all incoming transfers to prevent further issues and this resulted in a delay.

My best.

Hello,

We also keep reserves on different places (online and offline) distributing the risk evenly.
I support the other exchanges in not sharing additional detailed information as this question is directly towards security and any public details may very well compromise any security measures.

Dear Community,

On behalf of the Bitcoin7.com team we would like to comment officially on the events which followed our beta launch a week ago.
We kept silence on most of the topics, as hard as it was to read such criticism (although some points were correct and needed our closer attention).

We wanted bitcoin7.com to present a nice, new, professional alternative to Mtgox, the market almost 95% of the bitcoin supporters use. We wanted to try and offer faster support, faster reaction on add/withdraw funds request. These milestones are still our goal.

We launched the platform as a demo run, but the heat on the forum after its launch made us turn it to an official launch and work 24/7 on the immerse cases we had to solve.

After the launch there was a wave of hate across the Bitcoin.org forum accusing Bitcoin7 in many things, coming from many people, most of who have not even tried the service.

That's why we decided to back off a little and respond officially to all of them. Now let us answer all of the negative questions we encountered:


1. Who is Bitcoin7.com, complete stranger to the community?
It is true, our staff was not heavily involved in the daily discussion in this forum. By the time of our beta launch we didn't even had a whitelisted account so we could defend ourselves in opened topics about us. However our team consists of bitcoin-idea enthusiasts supporting smaller sites, writing local news even tried to launch smaller services like local mining pools.
A lot of the misunderstandings would have been cleared much faster if we were well known to this community, we admit that as our fault.

Bitcoin7.com is a joint venture of 2 companies (US and EU) and more people behind them.
We are working on a blog/press release section on Bitcoin7.com where we will publish more information about the identity of the people behind Bitcoin7

2. Does Bitcoin7 really exist, do they have an office as they claim?
Yes we really exist. Our HQ is in Sofia, Bulgaria.

3. Is it legal?
As a Bitcoin user you probably understand that operating with the brand new decentralized virtual currency is still not an exact subject of almost any legislation. We are subject to the Bulgarian tax and audit authorities, as being part of the EU we are also responsible under the EU jurisdiction. At the moment Bitcoin7's entity is licensed as a deposit collector and trader and we have applied for special revision of the online matching system (trading with user offers) and confirmation if additional license is needed. Bitcoin7 does not allow directly currency exchange of fiat currency, therefore we don't need such license. We are out of the US and unless there is a multinational agreement in force between US-Bulgaria or US-EU, we can't be held responsible for it. This of course doesn't mean we won't be willing to cooperate. Important part of our mission is to defend and improve the Bitcoin image as a whole.

4. Do you have AML policy? (Anti Money Laundering)
Yes we have. We started with no conditions as we monitor each withdraw manually and contact the people with larger amounts over email directly. The current automated conditions are:
- 1000$ per day/individual
- 10 000$ per month
These limits can be lifted upon proper identification. To lift your limits contact us.
Your acquisitions of us being illegal because we started without AML are not correct. At the moment we are being audited and wait for the final report which will tell us which actions we didn't take properly according to our current jurisdiction. During this audit we can operate (being solely responsible for any penalties we might be applied with).

5. Bitcoin7's entity is a Bulgarian company, Bulgaria is well known for its cyber crimes!
In one of the forum's topics there were 3 pages of offensive posts about our nation. We admit that Bulgaria has a bad control over IP and IT piracy, but that doesn't mean every single business is fraudulent. Are there fraudulent, phishing, spamming illegal porn or gambling sites in the US? Or in any other country with decent internet society? Yes there are.
Out of pure patriotic feeling we would like to remind you that the most famous Bitcoin miner - Poclbm was created by a remarkable Bulgarian developer - m0mchil (Momchil Georgiev, applause!) and many of you owe your mined coins to his creation. Don't underestimate the enthusiasm of our local community )

6. Security flaws. Did you really had security gaps once you started?
We can't guarantee 100% bulletproof-ness and we strongly believe that everyone who claims that is lying. We admit that there was a single CSRF security gap in our code, which was immediately closed upon reporting. We would like say a big THANK YOU for the forum users who didn't took part of the ugly, offensive posts versus Bitcoin7, speculating with the security issues and took their time helping us improve the security. We are the first bitcoin exchange to implement personal id certificates, we are manually monitoring most of the operations, we do invest most of our time on that matter. We have still a lot to do to improve the security of the whole platform and we hope that you will support us and help us eliminate any future threat.

7. Did you really started with ripped-off texts from another website?
As shameful and painful as it is we have to admit our guilt here. We contracted copywriters to assist us with the content of the website. We didn't check the validity and originality of the texts and we ended having a great designed website with stolen texts... We have been working on that since we learned about it. Most of the texts have been rewritten, the rest are being finished as we write this topic. I hope you even the original creators of the texts will understand us - it's not logical to create a new service, much more beautiful and useful in terms of UI than the current alternatives, to translate it on 20 languages .... and to have non-original texts (it really doesn't make any sense). This is a fault we admit as well. I hope our fast reaction on this topic will return your fate in us.

8. Do you really store values in floats?
Yes we did. Now we don't. By the time of our launch we kept most of the data with greater accuracy in integer format. However there were parts which used floats to preserve data. After some sleepless hours we rewrote everything which was stored as float. We can't show any extract of the DB or code as this could compromise our security. We hope, admitting our initial mistake and making up for it asap, would be enough for you to trust us on this matter.

9. Did you really reverted 4 transaction on your Euro market?
Yes we did. We had a problem with a local payment method, which we couldn't identity fast enough. The decision we made was to revert 4 deals on the Euro market in order to keep the buyer and seller 100% safe from fraud. We take this very seriously and if we need to protect the users rights and funds we will do everything possible to.
We removed the questionable payment method anyway, so we don't anticipate such situation to repeat itself.

10. Did you hacked Mtgox? 3 days after your launch the biggest exchange got hacked.
No, we didn't. We support the free trade, evidence for that is having the Mtgox payment API integrated as a payment method in our own system. We would gladly partner with any other exchange network. If you wish to talk more about it, please send us an email.


We believe that these answers cover all the bad, stupid non-sense (plus the correct acquisitions versus us) the last week.

We would STRONGLY appreciate if you test our system before commenting or posting. We would also very much appreciate if the moderators of this forum could keep the topic clean of any non useful comments. We would gladly receive any feedback, even if harsh criticism - as long as it's coming from someone who actually know what he is talking about.

The system is automatic and upon receiving on funds they appear in the recipient's account.

However, as I said, we missed a payment method which appeared as instant to our system, but was marked as pending in the payment provider's system. This also triggered the manual check and led to the taken actions.

Hello,

Please accept this as an official reply from Bitcoin7.com

We admit we had to reverse 4 transactions on the Euro market. The cause of the problem was a bigger delayed transaction through the German payment method Micropayment.de. As we couldn't identify on time if the payment was correct or not we had to reverse these transactions in order to defend the seller of the BTC. All BTC have been returned to the sellers.

We don't expect such problem with the following method to occur again as we removed the methods from their base, which would allow delay or even reversal/chargeback.

Our goal is to defend both the buyers and sellers on the bitcoin7 platform. Reversing the BTC to the seller's wallet was the only 100% defensive method we could have done. Otherwise if the money transaction wouldn't prove to be correct and we haven't responded quickly, we would have needed to reimburse the sellers.

How simple is what? The exploit should bring result, right? We tested it and there was no result. (we saw you tested it too, selling 1 BTC for 1$ -> if it was you, you made someone very happy )

Did you have any result? Yes or no?


P.S. We offered cuddlefish to test additionally for us, but he preferred to spam the forum with his first discovery. Pity this was more important to him.

davout did you see a real result of the "exploit"? Yes or No?

cuddlefish can you show a result of the gap you found? I didn't see you withdraw to an arbitrary address.

We had a CSRF which could not be used at all anyway. Of course the spot was fixed in a minute after reporting.

Part of the data is still stored in floats, we are upgrading at the moment and we aim to release the new version live this night.

On both points I can say honestly that neither the found CSRF could have harmed a user, nor the floats (on the datatypes we still use them) could cause crucial loss of data.

This is really getting ridiculous. Can someone show a real result from any successful "exploit" ?

I am not saying we are 100% bulletproof, we are constantly monitoring for flaws. But the small security gaps were closed a minute after the post and there are no "exploits" (at least known).

Just to mention that we are monitoring the topic closely, without taking part of it as it seems whatever we write there will always be people like davout who will speculate and turn the exchange to be a fraud. Luckily there are more and more successful trades and people with positive reaction.
We had flaws, we still have, we were not ready for the start yesterday, but we are working 24/7 on all requests.

Again thanks for all who are trusting us and also starting to defend us -> it really helps and motivates us people!

Hello, you can see them already: http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/
Bitcoincharts published Bitcoin7 yesterday. Index is b7USD

Also for personal questions and anonymity we suggest you better address our support team at: info@bitcoin7.com

Security is no joke indeed, thanks for reporting.
The glitch has been fixed. We review any single transaction manually at the moment anyway.
Our commitment is to ensure maximum stability, even if we have to restore damage.

@ Cuddlefish, I PMed you for more details.

bittersweet, digging further on this will help neither the users nor Bitcoin7.
We are thinking of what we can put on the site in order to confirm what we have been writing over the forum the last day.

We will be very happy if we switch the direction of the topic towards:

* feedback from actual users, who used the service - negative or positive
  - negative: we will see what we can do to improve
  - positive: we hope this will start clearing bc7's name

* impressions and suggestions - of everyone, even if you haven't used the service
  - User Interface: what can we do better in order to ensure easy, safe, fast nagivation through sites
  - Language: phrases we can improve (besides English, which is being totally redone at the moment, because of TH)
  - Features - some features which you find useful. They maybe from other sites or they may be something completely new

* feedback about other services like mtgox or th
  - What are they doing better than us
  - What do they have as site content which we still don't offer and why is this valuable to you

Appealing to all future writers in this topic: Let's try and really write about these things. You will see that you will gain much more if you let us know what exactly can we improve or what exactly did we do wrong servicing you (again so we can improve). This is something which can bring result to everyone + the BTC development as a whole.

We will try to respond to each suggestion/complaint - as long as it's from a real user and not someone who just wishes to blame us without trying us.

@ Sukrim: we don't store in floats. We keep the accuracy up to floats, but store numbers in a more "integer" way. I can't share more on the technical side of this matter

@ Bruce & other: we asked few of the people who we knew on this community if they can help us with finding good, reliable members on the forum who can test our service and post on the forum for it. We also wanted to add bonus BTC for such start-up promotion. I don't see this as a bribery in any possible way. If someone got paid from us (not third party referral) please confirm here...

@ Nescio: I have to agree with some of your accusation. It is true that we were not good prepared for the launch. We didn't expect such boom, we wanted a small start with a small group of reliable members, so we can acquire feedback. However the negative boom on the forum yesterday made this impossible and we had to work 24/7 to provide the server we wanted to provide on the long run. On the legal side, I can assure you that according to the jurisdiction we are subject of we are completely legal and we can operate while being candidate for audit. I hope very soon we will be able to update the site with the needed information from a third party as an auditor, until then I can't post anything about this on the forum. (of course risking the scamming accusations to continue).

@ AML accusations: Have you tried contacting MTGOX about their AML policy? Most of the trustworthy to us bitcoin users showed us their experience - how mtgox raises the withdrawal limits immediately without waiting for ID or the hardcopy of any identification to arrive. Nothing bad about MTGOX, we respect their contribution and their leadership on the market. I just want to say that at the moment even the leader is struggling with the problem, how exactly to establish and follow proper aml/verification in order to preserve this business.

@ Klamothonsite: Thank you for trusting us

Bitcoin7 is not offering any type of fiat currency exchange <- for this you 100% you need a license.

For Virtual currency <-> Fiat deposit collection we don't have to be licensed 100%, but we have to be controlled and subject to verification (which we are currently doing)

Of course, we are sure that with BTC growing more and more popular there will be new regulations which we will need to adopt.

If you are dealing with BTC you should know very good that still there are many unclear things and you are doing that on your own risk. Otherwise you wouldn't be in this forum I guess..



P.S we have been trading/exchanging/buying/purchasing online virtual currency in online games on more than 36 languages for 6 years. We have passed 2 successful audits without having our service suspended or our accounts closed.

@JellyFishRancher and mintaka: Thank you guys, we really appreciate that - at last some sun on the horizon

Just one more thing about the negative things, said here regarding cybercrime and Bulgaria...

- After all, the most famous (correct me if I am wrong) Bitcoin miner is written by m0mchil - remarkable BG developer, many people owe their coin productions to his miner
- Check out Alexa on Mtgox: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/mtgox.com -> it seems the BG community is leading #1 on the local rankings there.

I hope we will be less "strangers" to this community.

You can choose to ignore this post it came more like a patriotic response than a business or BTC related one ... (defense vs bad critic:)
We will try to develop the website as a global platform, using our current partners abroad plus any new ones we encounter down the road.