I hated when they removed their legacy wallet option. They removed the ability to do custom spends (choosing your inputs), at least from imported private keys, making privacy much worse for their customers. I stopped using their wallet entirely after this.

They don't provide full Ethereum functionality here so indeed, MyEtherWallet is a better option. I wouldn't consider using Blockchain.info "storing online" since your private keys aren't exposed to them. Sending transactions can be significantly less safe than with desktop wallets, though, because of the risk of MITM attacks. The key security issue with Blockchain.info is that you don't control the software, even if you control the private keys.

That's not entirely true. If you keep up with the Russian community, the owners of the site (or at least the two guys who launched the site) are very likely known to some people. The amount of money lost is also nothing to sneeze at for many creditors, some of whom are likely capable of locating said owners and, well, killing them if necessary. They already have a target on their back from the US government; that's not a massive issue if they stay in countries with no extradition treaties with the US and stop processing fiat (at least through the USD and EUR banking systems; maybe some limited cash and Ruble options are possible).

The largest motivating factor for them to issue at least partial refunds is to prevent having another target on their back from nefarious creditors who have the means to find them.

Sadly, there seem to be hundreds of people in your position. If you read the threads on their Twitter posts, or visit the Poloniex subreddit, it seems like a nightmare. I really did feel like it wasn't unreasonable back in May when we were at the height of the altcoin bubble.

But they should have hired significantly more engineers and support resources since that time. It seems they haven't, for whatever reason. Or something more nefarious is going on. Now that the altcoin and ERC token markets are much calmer than a few months ago, they are running out of excuses.

Their legal teams may have determined that revoking service from Washington customers is sufficient, but at least in the case of Polo, their own terms of service contradict their legal compliance requirements:


They openly admit that they are an MSB, yet they do not hold any licenses anywhere. It's almost like they announced to FINCEN, "Hey, look! I'm an unlicensed MSB, operating in 49 US states. Come shut me down and fine me!"

Personally, I get the risks, and they can be worth it. But you need to be a good trader capitalizing on the massive volatility, and you need to minimize the time you hold funds on these unlicensed exchanges, especially after what happened to BTC-e last month. Don't expose too much of your funds to this risk, and mitigate it as much as possible.

And if you're a losing trader, don't bother. Get your funds out.

Trading is a great way to increase your coin stash and generate some regular income. But it cannot be stressed enough: Most people will lose money from trading. It's generally understood that trading returns follow a Pareto distribution, so 80% of traders are losing money to the 20% that are profitable.

I've done well over the years, but the simple truth is that most people aren't cut out for trading. It can take a real psychological toll on you if you can't deal with the volatile swings and prospects of losing streaks. Every trader needs to be able to take repeated losses, no matter how good their system is.

Yeah, zero brand recognition + .online domain without SSL are major red flags. Who sells products online without encryption? Who wants to give their credit card information to such a site?

In general, randomly Googling for mining hardware will lose you a lot of money. If you don't get scammed, you'll get a raw deal. Check out the mining hardware subforum to get a better idea of your needs and what to expect: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=76.0

You're generally best off going directly to the manufacturer.

It depends where you are located and which exchange you are trying to use. The only exchange I knew that used PerfectMoney was BTC-e. I may have seen it as an option on SimpleFx (bucket shop broker).

Bitstamp and Kraken allow wire transfers in. That's usually the cheaper option (at least if you are trying to move a good deal of money). Coinbase/GDAX allow free ACH transfers for US customers. I generally try to avoid third party payment processors because of the higher fees.

It all depends on how much liquidity there is. And due to the opaque nature of the service, no one can ever know (except the operator) how much liquidity there is. Given the volume of darknet markets and the apparent visibility of very privacy-minded bitcoiners in the space, I would assume that the most popular mixer(s) would be fine for small volumes like 1-10 BTC.

You might get back a small bit of taint from your original inputs if you keep reusing the service. But the bigger problem is that you're probably getting back taint from much "dirtier" coins too, by using the mixer at all.

If you need major liquidity, these mixer services won't work. Imagine if the Bitfinex hacker tried to mix coins through Chipmixer.

I took that to mean accounts, legal entities and officers (of said entities) with ties to operating the exchange. Mayzus is in the business of money transmission, so I don't think their regular end user customers would be reported to the authorities. It is the operators of BTC-e, not its customers, who are formally accused of money laundering.


Generally true. After my experiences with online poker (regarding Usemywallet/ECOpay and others), I don't trust third party money transmitters for a second. Once something goes wrong, your money is locked up for months. And they may just disappear. In the case of OKPAY, I don't think they are necessarily clear of this mess with BTC-e. After all, the US government wants its money!

It's all very bizarre. First, the US government says nothing about seized funds. Second, OKPAY says in their blog that they have voluntarily frozen accounts that they believe are associated with the exchange (and forwarded information to law enforcement). And BTC-e confirmed that [some of] their fiat bank accounts are frozen by Mayzus -- not the US government, but by Mayzus.

BTC-e has been using Mayzus for years to process much of their fiat money. It's been speculated on more than one occasion that the exchange itself functioned partly as a front for Mayzus in a larger money laundering ring. I find it very odd that the US government didn't freeze Mayzus accounts (as far as anyone has said). It's also very odd that the US government didn't announce how much money was frozen/seized. That's usually front-and-center in the press releases.

Something is very off about this whole thing. It seems like the US government may have botched the whole thing pretty bad. I suspect there are close ties between Mayzus and the BTC-e owners. Some of BTC-e's recent announcements almost made it sound like they have an expectation to recover fiat funds frozen by Mayzus. Presumably a lot of that money is out of the reach of the US government, too. Their publicly known bank account was in Mongolia, ffs...

To answer your question, nobody has any idea what the hell is going on. It's definitely unsafe to use OKPAY and Moneypolo right now. I'd even be concerned about fiat funds withdrawn from their services right now, in case they get drawn into this BTC-e mess. Sergey Mayzus' reaction was a very clear attempt to cover his ass. Who knows what's going on behind the scenes? Who knows what level of involvement Vinnik had, or what he knows, or what he told the feds?

There could be new crypto in the system. After the Bitfinex token scenario, I wouldn't put anything past the greater fools in this market. What I mean is, I think that if withdrawals are flowing, the site is stable, and there is some level of trading (likely no fees for some time), some fools may actually enter the exchange to buy up the tokens.

For another thing, I suspect BTC-e is pocketing a good deal of funds here. Maybe they plan to provide liquidity. Combined with verification tiers / limited withdrawals, people are forced to trade. The exchange could also manipulate the token prices as well (I certainly suspect Bitfinex did).

I just wish that BTC-e would do right by fiat holders. Bitfinex overall did a good job evening out the haircut. There's no easy answer; every outcome will leave some people pissed off. But ideally, I think they should be freezing asset values at the time of server downage and denominating everything in USD value, then distributing crypto assets on an equal loss basis, based on available funds. There should be a clear formula that puts all creditors in the same boat. I'm a BTCUSD trader and I happened to be waiting out the dip. Sucks that the people on the other side of the BTCUSD trade seem so much better off.

I have a Russian friend who is actually quite happy to get fiat denominated value and thinks that if the exchange relaunches, that it will rebuild trust quickly. That sounds insane to me, but I was also amazed at the Bitfinex recovery last year.

I can't speak to the RUR situation. Presumably there aren't the same risks as there are for USD and EUR. So maybe some limited liquidity fiat markets are possible, eventually. As for Tether, it works because the house of cards hasn't tumbled down yet. Hundreds of millions of dollars are locked in Bitfinex/Tether, and no one can get it out. That doesn't seem like a sustainable situation, long term.

Short term, no one cares, because crypto is in a bubble; people need Tether to move USD value among exchanges, and Tether stays equal to or even more valuable than real USD because of inability for Bitfinex to receive deposits. If/when all the money stops flowing into crypto, I think we will start to see this situation break down considerably.


I think this is what the exchange's legal team believed. It's what most users likely believed. KYC is the problem of the actual fiat transmitter, right? But I guess that's not how the FBI sees things...


Payment processors like OKPAY (Mayzus) launder money all day, every day. I'm actually puzzled regarding not only how Mayzus avoided being taken down with BTC-e, but how it could be that Mayzus voluntarily froze BTC-e's bank accounts, rather than having them frozen by the feds and their proxies in other countries.

I have mixed feelings about this update. On one hand, fiat holders can be relieved that they don't need to take on NVC, PPC and NMC bags (NVC is a particularly illiquid shitcoin). On the other hand, what kind of premium are fiat holders going to need to pay to get any value out? This socialization of losses definitely seems to favor coin holders.

That's my primary concern. It feels shitty enough sending my confidential personal info and ID to Coinbase or Gemini, because I don't really trust them to store the data properly. So I especially don't want to send them to unregulated exchanges.


I understand the risks and they are factored into the decision. Sending ID, utility bill and personal info that could be used to steal my identity is crossing the line with these types of businesses. Risking a small amount when the exchange could disappear or get seized is of less concern to me.

Fiat money has a couple big things going for it. For one thing, governments can mandate that that fiat currency be accepted for the payment of debts or taxes. For another, consumers love the idea of reversibility (being compensated for fraud, having buyer's remorse, etc) even if merchants hate it. For these reasons alone, I don't see cryptocurrencies replacing fiat currencies.

I think they are simply a new asset class that will compete with other types of assets -- stocks, bonds, real property, gold, oil. And it will be harder for the central banks to pump the economy, because people will be putting some portion of their savings into crypto rather than the stock market.

There is a distinction to be made between central banks and commercial banks, isn't there? Commercial banks will provide financial services if there's demand and as long as they are government-sanctioned. For now, it looks like bitcoin is being sanctioned and regulated.

Central banks feel threatened because people are increasingly looking for good investment opportunities and places to store value -- outside of fiat currencies and a bubbling stock market. But I don't know what a "war" would look like, because it seems like governments are mostly approaching it favorably at this point.

I had no idea the limits were this low. I was considering setting up Bittrex account for throwing small amounts at low market cap altcoins. Given that I apparently can't withdraw anything without verification... what is the first tier of verification? Do you need to submit documents to be able to withdraw anything at all?

Given the timing of these changes on Bittrex, the new terms on Poloniex and Bitfinex pulling out of the US market, it's pretty clear that unlicensed exchanges are scrambling to cover their asses after BTC-e got taken down...

It doesn't necessarily matter if Poloniex and Bittrex don't do fiat processing. (In fact, Poloniex says up front that it is an MSB, registered with FINCEN, but it doesn't have state licenses)

I believe that provisions of the Patriot Act or legislation/administrative regs that came after expanded the definition of MSB beyond simple fiat currency processing to value transfer. The BTC-e indictment also refers to the platform being used as a means for US customers to transfer money to one another. We don't know if that means BTC-e codes or cryptocurrency or what, but since fiat processing required verification by the intermediary, it kind of sounds like they are referring to the former two.

Well, I had some funds on BTC-e, so I suppose I was a sheep, too. There were reasons to do so, and I won't go into the details.

My position has always been the unregulated exchanges could be taken down at any time. If you were to use them, always spread around the risk to multiple exchanges, and minimize time holding funds on them. The BTC-e seizure makes things more urgent now for users on exchanges like Bitfinex, Kraken, etc. to get their funds out while they can.

The UN (and Security Council) are irrelevant here. Could you point out otherwise? The US will not pass any resolution that will inhibit its abilities to coordinate globally to take down what it perceives as illicit or nefarious actors. If the UNSC does nothing, the US can continue as always. Otherwise, the US can just veto any resolution.

As was mentioned, Russia or China could provide BTC-e cover, but why would they? The bigger question is why would a prospective customer use an exchange that is under indictment from the United States (i.e. the world police)? That's asking to get your shit seized. Anyone with a brain would just use a different exchange.