best reply.

concerning the suicide thing: don´t. it´s only money. it is not as important as it seems.

this time next week we will be back to normal insanity in this thread.

Some will have learned the hard way that hedging against unpredictable volatility in crypto is not optional and some will have made good profits.

Either way: life goes on.

I still love it.
All the great things it brings us don´t go away when it swings down in price to more than three times what it was last fall.


If you lost money in bitcoin, I feel bad for you son
I got 99 problems, but money aint one.
bit it!

hmm
Am I the only one to see the little boing back up?

Either way, for arbitrage today is a good day.

anyone have an idea what is causing this panic?

apart from that, why do so many here think the price of bitcoin is of crucial importance for it´s further existance? It´s volatile as hell, but meanwhile we should all have gotten aquainted with that.

deposit & withdrawal is swift and reliable (only had an issue once - read on the pages before).
especially sepa is fast with hitbtc (both ways).
"bonus feature" BTC deposits are tradeable after only one confirmation which puts hitbtc about 40 minutes ahead of any other exchange.

other currencies/crypto I have no experience.

good to see you also making a little profit of running the exchange.
That´s a good sign in my eyes.

Well, LakeBTC my donkey experiences are just of a theoretical nature.

Concerning deposit times at bitstamp we are back to the poor standards which originally sparked the idea to thuis donley comparison.

I´ll be back to kraken et al with the next round of fiat deposits.

thumbs up to hitbtc.com techs!
issue was solved within very short time and also well after midnight in Talinn.
actually your support answer mail came in long after the problem was solved

BTC deposit not showing here too.
currently at 10 confirmations.
guys, please get this sorted soon.

And maybe just disable deposits while that bug hasn´t been killed...

It´s a bit frustrating when most people do not do any own research (e.g.: visiting the websites in question).

Some are so quick to yell "FUD!", or even "MTGOX!" while for others it seems to be news that bitstamp switched from unicredit to raiffeisen (Slovenia).

Well they obviously have some issues concerning speed of deposits or handling of fiat withdrawals, but as there is not one report of btc withdrawal problems or "missing" fiat, I´d suggest to turn the panic volume down a bit.

Id would certainly be a nice move to have bitstamp switch it´s banking to fidor (germany). They are actively endorsing bitcoin biz (bitcoin.de market place is run in their name for regulatory reasons) and even kraken (also a british Limited) have their bank account there.
The question is rather, why have bitstamp not moved there yet, but switched to a bank which is not known for any bitcoinfriendlyness, but rather being one of the very few banks without any offices or operations inside the US (think regulation, think US sanctions on other countries)?

update:
my account was finally credited.
ofcourse with the next days conversion rate.

My mind is made up. I´ll trade that balance out when it is not too much (additional) loss and take my money elswhere.
It´s a shame because bitstamp once was a great place to work with, but if I have to lose money just by depositing, I´m out.

We (probably) all know how sepa transfers work and that there is a legal one day maximum limit for the banks to process these transactions so they don´t cash out excessively on the float (although sepa in principle is a real time system). But when I last sent money to bitstamp I directly used the TARGET 2 system which is a fully established one-by-one real time (and not bundlewise like sepa) money transfer system between (practically) all european banks  with transfer times under 5 minutes (!) from one bank account to another.

In addition I got a message in the morning that my money actually had already arrived (surprise, surprise), but bitstamp couldn´t be bothered to credit it to my account for another half day.

It probably is just the result of not having enough staff to process the deposits and not evil intentions, but all the time sepa transfers take longer than one banking day is float on which bitstamp profits - the money is already on their bank account (the conspiracy dudes will want to see some fractional reserve potential here). 
It´s like giving them a credit that you pay for.

I usually try to be modest in my words, but:

FUCK THAT!

Since the deposit times on bitstamp are giving me some unexpected free time, I did a little math.

I know my deposit arrived yesterday afternoon (checked with the banks TARGET 2 system).
I live in Vienna (Austria) and Bitstamps (new) bank is in Maribor (Slovenia).
The distance is about 190 km (roughly 118,5 miles).
A donkey can travel at an average of 8-10 miles per hour.
Let´s say I would go easy on my long eared friend. We´d take breaks every now and then and do some sight seeing on the way.

We would have been at the bank this morning, maybe had some good lunch (hay and fish at the Novi Svet Pri Stolnici for instance) and would be back across the border by now.

Well, I didn´t take the donkey (mostly because I don´t have a donkey), I used the internet.
And get entertaining support replies from bitstamp staff like:

"...
thank you for contacting us. According to our logs your deposit has indeed arrived and it should be credited to your to your Bitstamp account in the next few hours.

Should you require any additional assistance, please feel free to ask

Best regards,
..."



I think I will have to invest in a donkey after all.  

edit:
It seems a donkey can be bought for somewhere around 400 USD.
If (when the finally credit my deposit) they use todays Euro to USD conversion rate and not yesterdays when the money arrived at their bank account, I will have lost value of about 45 USD (0,5%). So after latest 10 deposits my new donkey would have already paid for itself.

edits edit:

Maybe bitching around and offering to nail dead cats to peoples doors helps or bitstamp just got their shit together again, BUT I did a little deposit race today

Kraken vs Bitstamp

both several k euro, both via TARGET 2
and both managed to credit the deposit on the same day within a few hours.
So I´d say I got two winners.

Kraken still was a bit faster, but I was actually expecting to wait for bitstamp to credit the deposit by tomorrow.

This is a HUGE improvement and a great argument to reconsider stamp for daily business.
Please keep beating the donkey.

edits edits edit:
tried again with a little more fiat and "boom" back to the poor standards which sparked this post in the first place.
Next round going to the donkey.

this is just a little thumbs-up for the great handling of fiat deposits by hitbtc.

smooth in and smooth out.
Please keep up the good work.

(I am right now having a really bad hair day with the guys over at bitstamp for not crediting my deposits and probably using the next day exchange rate to usd, costing me again some percent on top of missed opportunities cost).

hitbtc might have some issues too, but for now they are doing an excellent job.

You are getting it wrong with the bitcoin.de 60 minutes.
It is 60 minutes you have as a buyer to confirm that you actually sent the money via your banks ebanking.
If you dont do that confirmation the trade gets canceled, you get a negative rating and the sell can sell the bitcoin to someone else.

The system is not really well explained on the bitcoin.de site as I have to experience on a daily basis with my buyers there...

bitstamp is obviously moving its banking from unicredit to raiffeisen - unannounced - panic. what else?

I guess they were simply not happy with unicredit anymore (as so many other people who had accounts there too. yes me too) and also raiffeisen (rbi) does not have any operations in the usa which could have their assets frozen if bitstamp was not complying to possibly upcoming regulation. Yet there is a "leaked" internal memo on reddit...
I will phone rbi in the morning to see what is going on before any further deposits to bitstamp (atm the €->$ rate sucks anyway).

has anyone here tried to contact rbi for a statement?
I´ll give them a ring tomorrow morning.
Panic seems a bit ahead of actual events at the moment.

Sure an official bitstamp statement is needed most in a situation like this, but I don´t see any reason to panic.
...and I was in no way implying that anything fishy was going on.
You don´t need to be a bad person or company to want to do business with someone living in a country the US does not like (greetings to my friends in russia and ukraine (both parts) btw!).

-and unicredit is anyway not really the best bank around (anyone remember the times when stamp deposits got frozen on the way in until you answered those lovely questions? If that did not come from unicredit and their fear of US regulations...)...

That bank change is something rather positive in my view. A step in the right direction.
Why? Because it greatly reduces bitstamps exposure to US regulations.
Any bank (or any other company for that matter) which has a branch in the USA can have its assets there taken "hostage" until full compliance with us law is achieved. Raiffeisen on the other hand does not have a branch there and is an "old player" with a very good standing in europe and especially the east.
Already now you would choose Raiffeisen if you for instance wanted to trade with partners in any country which is under US sanctions.
Apart from that Raiffeisen practically "owns" Austria