Bitcoin Websites Experience Service Outage in Venezuela

[OmegaStarScream]

A number of bitcoin websites experienced downtime today over a period of roughly four hours due to what appears to be a DNS server error at a major Internet service provider (ISP).

Affected websites included local Latin American exchanges such as BlinkTrade, BitInka and SurBTC, as well as larger international startups such as Bitstamp, Blockchain, BTC-e and Coinbase.


It dosen't make a lot of sense to me , how only BTC websites goes down , it's not like they have something in common or something (like IP adress etc .. )  this can't be an accident if you ask me
You can find full article here : http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-websites-experience-service-outage-in-venezuela/

[AgentofCoin]

No surprise this is happening in a place like Venezuela.
They are beginning their death spiral.

[OROBTC]

...

The outage does not surprise me at all.  IIUC, with BTC sites only being blocked, well then it has to be deliberate by Venezuela's .gov.  It will be of great interest to see if others in the private sector in Venezuela are able to keep the links and lines open to BTC sites.

Yes, Venezuela is in a death spiral, it arguably has been for two years.

This may an interesting test case to see if a developing country is able to shut down the decentralized BTC system most of us are used to.  If the Venezuelan government is able to close the system, then an advanced country like the USA could perhaps even more easily shut it down.


A question for the knowledgeable here:  Would BTC users in Venezuela using TOR be affected?

[franky1]

...

The outage does not surprise me at all.  IIUC, with BTC sites only being blocked, well then it has to be deliberate by Venezuela's .gov.  It will be of great interest to see if others in the private sector in Venezuela are able to keep the links and lines open to BTC sites.

Yes, Venezuela is in a death spiral, it arguably has been for two years.

This may an interesting test case to see if a developing country is able to shut down the decentralized BTC system most of us are used to.  If the Venezuelan government is able to close the system, then an advanced country like the USA could perhaps even more easily shut it down.


A question for the knowledgeable here:  Would BTC users in Venezuela using TOR be affected?

what happened was not "shutting down the decentralised BTC system"...

bitcoin is not a website..
what you are trying to say is that walmart shut its doors to customers and all the staff went home unpaid, because their website crashed..
no.. shops would still run. staff would still work. stock would still travel from warehouse to stores.. the websites are just customer gateways but not the only way to get things.

bitcoins decentralised system has nothing at all to do with websites..

[OROBTC]

...

The outage does not surprise me at all.  IIUC, with BTC sites only being blocked, well then it has to be deliberate by Venezuela's .gov.  It will be of great interest to see if others in the private sector in Venezuela are able to keep the links and lines open to BTC sites.

Yes, Venezuela is in a death spiral, it arguably has been for two years.

This may an interesting test case to see if a developing country is able to shut down the decentralized BTC system most of us are used to.  If the Venezuelan government is able to close the system, then an advanced country like the USA could perhaps even more easily shut it down.


A question for the knowledgeable here:  Would BTC users in Venezuela using TOR be affected?

what happened was not "shutting down the decentralised BTC system"...

bitcoin is not a website..
what you are trying to say is that walmart shut its doors to customers and all the staff went home unpaid, because their website crashed..
no.. shops would still run. staff would still work. stock would still travel from warehouse to stores.. the websites are just customer gateways but not the only way to get things.

bitcoins decentralised system has nothing at all to do with websites..

Thank you for responding, I did ask for knowledgeable people to provide some insight.

What do Venezuelans who want to buy/sell BTC have to do then?  Or what are the bottlenecks they face? 

Would these types of problems affect the USA/W Europe in a similar kind of way?

Thanks again... 

[Guido]

http://bitcoinist.net/venezuela-tests-bitcoin-website-ban-streisand-effect-incoming/

Venezuela “Tests” Bitcoin Website Ban – Streisand Effect Incoming

According to multiple complaints from Bitcoin users within Venezuela, the government of Venezuela has started blocking several known Bitcoin websites. The affected websites include Bitcoin exchanges, Bitcoin news sites, and also Bitcoin mining sites. The major ISP in Venezuela is CANTV, who has previously done similar censorship in the country. Like last time, the Venezuelan ISP has started publicly claiming that the blockage was due to a platform error. An error that conveniently only affected Bitcoin sites and Twitter, a site that the Venezuelan government has been caught red handed trying to censor before.

The current list of banned sites include:

coindesk.com
blockchain.info
blinktrade.com
surbitcoin.com
miningrigrentals.com
nicehash.com
btc-e.com
coinapult.com
coinbase.com

Also read: Venezuelans are Using Bitcoin to Go Around Government Restrictions

This Isn’t Venezuela’s First Censorship Fiasco
moises-872422_1280Internet censorship of this sort is nothing new to Venezuela, and is likely the government flexing their muscles and testing some blocking functionality that they might need to use during a crisis. After all, the United States has also claimed that it could do the same. Having observed the Venezuelan government blockade and censor Twitter and then publicly deny doing so, Author Jose-Luis Rivas stated the facts simply:

Censorship is unconstitutional, as it is established in the article 57 of Venezuela’s Constitution. A blockade is an act of censorship. And worse, there is no transparency about what are they blocking or why. The Constitution article forbids censorchip to civil servants to report about the matters they are responsible, and the recently approved infogoverment law in its 13th article promotes transparency and maximum promotion that should be given to their actions. I hope the public servants show themselves as an example of citizenshsip and fully enforce the laws. There are already computer crime laws and there is no need to break a law, neither the Constitution, to enforce another one.

[Hazir]

I think it is an attack coordinated to destroy bitcoin. Odds that only bitcoin sites are being affected while other domains are totally fine is enough to think that. They are testing Bitcoin ban! And as CoinDesk stated: "Similar incidents have already occurred this year in Russia, where the state's media watchdog group restricted access to five sites. Representatives of affected businesses later brought their case to court in April, at which time a judge restored access to the websites." - it is the same case imo.

[franky1]

Thank you for responding, I did ask for knowledgeable people to provide some insight.

What do Venezuelans who want to buy/sell BTC have to do then?  Or what are the bottlenecks they face?  

Would these types of problems affect the USA/W Europe in a similar kind of way?

Thanks again...  

bitcoin itself still functions. wallets still make payments and people can still see balances.. nothing has changed.
people can still go to shops that accept bitcoin and still swap them face to face or through many different places.

the websites affected are just side businesses used to make things easier. mainly for investing and speculating.
so this is where people need to stop relying on centralised businesses, and start being more decentralised about their uses.

bitcoin can still function very well without centralised services, people have just become dependant on it soo much, that they do not even realise the purpose of bitcoin

[Agamenon]

use another ISP. 

[franky1]

use another ISP. 

or simply use other bitcoin services until you dont have to be reliant on them.. EG if blockchain.info goes down there are a dozen other blockchain viewer websites about.

[Mickeyb]

Thank you for responding, I did ask for knowledgeable people to provide some insight.

What do Venezuelans who want to buy/sell BTC have to do then?  Or what are the bottlenecks they face?  

Would these types of problems affect the USA/W Europe in a similar kind of way?

Thanks again...  

bitcoin itself still functions. wallets still make payments and people can still see balances.. nothing has changed.
people can still go to shops that accept bitcoin and still swap them face to face or through many different places.

the websites affected are just side businesses used to make things easier. mainly for investing and speculating.
so this is where people need to stop relying on centralised businesses, and start being more decentralised about their uses.

bitcoin can still function very well without centralised services, people have just become dependant on it soo much, that they do not even realise the purpose of bitcoin

Yes you are right, even though for the new people not relying on these centralized services makes it even harder to cope with technology of Bitcoin. But where is a will, there is a way. I see it that way.

This is also a very interesting experiment. If I am not wrong, this is the first time something like this happens in the world. It will be interesting to see how will the whole Bitcoin ecosystem react in this kind of situation in Venezuela. We can learn a lot from this!

[neutraLTC]

CANTV attempted to block the popular website DolarToday by blocking access to cloudfare thus blocking most sites that use cloudfare. Source: https://d3d5dz3e9kyqan.cloudfront.net/confirmado-cantv-y-conatel-bloquean-medio-internet-para-sacar-dolartoday-del-aire-sin-exito-aqui-la-prueba/

[Q7]

It's more like an effort from a central body with the authority to block access to the websites. Obviously those that did it see bitcoin as a threat and needs to take whatever possible measures to prevent its further use. It will be interesting to see what would happen from here and whether blocking access might be an effective measure.

[neutraLTC]

It's more like an effort from a central body with the authority to block access to the websites. Obviously those that did it see bitcoin as a threat and needs to take whatever possible measures to prevent its further use. It will be interesting to see what would happen from here and whether blocking access might be an effective measure.

I agree with you, as you may or may not know, the Venezuelan government is the majority shareholder.

On January 8, 2007, President Hugo Chávez announced that Venezuela would re-nationalize CANTV, a move aimed at returning the company's control to the state. On April 8, 2007, the Venezuelan Government launched a tender offer to acquire Cantv’s shares in Venezuela (Class D) and in the United States (ADS). One month later on expiring the offer, the Government acquired 79.6% of the outstanding shares of the Company, in addition to the 6.6% which it previously owned, obtaining control of the Company with a total of 86.2% of its total shares.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANTV#Privatization_and_re-nationalization

[bitcreditscc]

tor mirrors anyone?

[MicroGuy]

No surprise this is happening in a place like Venezuela.
They are beginning their death spiral.

The death spiral that started in New York is now spreading. It has now infected Mexico, China, Australia, and Russia among others.

According to our think tank's calculations, Bitcoin will be banned/highly restricted in most major countries within 3-5 years.  

[neutraLTC]

tor mirrors anyone?

Tor mirrors would be effective yes, but would discourage most non-technical people from using Bitcoin.

[Kprawn]

They cannot stop Bitcoin, by shutting down Bitcoin related websites. A lot of people have tried this before with peer-2-peer networks and they were unsuccessful. They might

slow it down, but they will not shut it down completely. People just find ways to circumvent these bans, by using Tor or moving hosts or using alternative ISP's.

Social media is also a very popular media to use, and also classified sites like Backpage. People will just go underground, if they go through with the banning.

[sniveling]

They cannot stop Bitcoin, by shutting down Bitcoin related websites. A lot of people have tried this before with peer-2-peer networks and they were unsuccessful. They might

slow it down, but they will not shut it down completely. People just find ways to circumvent these bans, by using Tor or moving hosts or using alternative ISP's.

Social media is also a very popular media to use, and also classified sites like Backpage. People will just go underground, if they go through with the banning.

China banned accessing bitcointalk.org but I think there are still Chinese citizens accessing it through Tor or a VPN. It's easier to block accessing a domain name like bitcointalk.org than attempting to stop Bitcoin wallets accessing nodes. Nodes don't have a domain name, they only have IP addresses and there are so many different addresses it's not simple to try to block them all. Also Bitcon wallets can run through Tor, which makes it far harder to block them.

[Hazir]

China banned accessing bitcointalk.org but I think there are still Chinese citizens accessing it through Tor or a VPN. It's easier to block accessing a domain name like bitcointalk.org than attempting to stop Bitcoin wallets accessing nodes. Nodes don't have a domain name, they only have IP addresses and there are so many different addresses it's not simple to try to block them all. Also Bitcon wallets can run through Tor, which makes it far harder to block them.

It is not the fact that we can find workaround to access bitcoin sites, use TOR and go underground is important here imo.
The sole reality that they are banning bitcoin without reason, just because it is threat to corrupt financial system is scary.
The moral of the story is: I can find a way to access bitcoin network - but I don't want to be called terrorist in the process.