Bitcoin-Central, first exchange licensed to operate with a bank. This is HUGE

[addi]

APRIL FOOLS. We held your money for a few hours for the lulz

If it's a joke, they lost me as a customer.

[1714109886]

1714109886

[1714109886]

1714109886

[steelboy]

APRIL FOOLS. We held your money for a few hours for the lulz

I presume you have nothing to do with them?

[mccorvic]

Lol, it always seems like whenever we have a price increase some service or something has to ruin it by fudging up something hardcore.  I don't think this will impact price, but it's still annoying.

[MPOE-PR]

Aqoba is simply acting as a partner realizing the segregation of funds between Paymium's funds and the customers deposits. Unlike many other exchanges, Bitcoin-central (and paytunia) offers the same protection to depositors as any other payment institution. Your bitcoin-central account or paytunia account is a full fledged payment account (soon to be linked to a debit card and a unique IBAN number).

Nice thing to have all things considered.

[addi]

Aqoba is simply acting as a partner realizing the segregation of funds between Paymium's funds and the customers deposits. Unlike many other exchanges, Bitcoin-central (and paytunia) offers the same protection to depositors as any other payment institution. Your bitcoin-central account or paytunia account is a full fledged payment account (soon to be linked to a debit card and a unique IBAN number).

Nice thing to have all things considered.

It's only for the balance you have in EUR. There are absolutely no guaranteed protections for BTC's

[Joost]

Aqoba is simply acting as a partner realizing the segregation of funds between Paymium's funds and the customers deposits. Unlike many other exchanges, Bitcoin-central (and paytunia) offers the same protection to depositors as any other payment institution. Your bitcoin-central account or paytunia account is a full fledged payment account (soon to be linked to a debit card and a unique IBAN number).

Nice thing to have all things considered.

It's only for the balance you have in EUR. There are absolutely no guaranteed protections for BTC's

Then let's just hope my buy order didn't come through.. 

[molecular]

Aqoba is simply acting as a partner realizing the segregation of funds between Paymium's funds and the customers deposits. Unlike many other exchanges, Bitcoin-central (and paytunia) offers the same protection to depositors as any other payment institution. Your bitcoin-central account or paytunia account is a full fledged payment account (soon to be linked to a debit card and a unique IBAN number).

Nice thing to have all things considered.

It's only for the balance you have in EUR. There are absolutely no guaranteed protections for BTC's

Then let's just hope my buy order didn't come through.. 

Interesting question: when did trading stop? I was going to pull some sell orders when I saw the message.

[NABiT]

[Apr-1 10:30 CET] Bitcoin-Central and Paytunia update: Our customer's bitcoins and euros are safe and will not be affected by the security breach

https://bitcoin-central.net

[MPOE-PR]

So nothing further yet huh. 48 hours soonish....

[bitdragon]

So nothing further yet huh. 48 hours soonish....

[Apr-02 6:00PM CET]

Our servers have been quarantined and are currently being used for the investigation of the security breach.

We are currently in the process of building a new secure production environment to return with normal service.

The funds, both in euros and bitcoins, of Bitcoin-Central and Paytunia users are not affected. Incoming wire transfers that have been credited by our bank will be available when normal service resumes.

Confirmed Bitcoin-Central and Paytunia EUR withdrawals requested before March 28, 2013 at 21:10 by verified users have been processed today.

We thank you for your trust and patience!

[the founder]

So nothing further yet huh. 48 hours soonish....

[Apr-02 6:00PM CET]

Our servers have been quarantined and are currently being used for the investigation of the security breach.

We are currently in the process of building a new secure production environment to return with normal service.

The funds, both in euros and bitcoins, of Bitcoin-Central and Paytunia users are not affected. Incoming wire transfers that have been credited by our bank will be available when normal service resumes.

Confirmed Bitcoin-Central and Paytunia EUR withdrawals requested before March 28, 2013 at 21:10 by verified users have been processed today.

We thank you for your trust and patience!

that's the latest release in instawallet(less) releases.

[xhoud01]

Lots of the work that we do is unseen.

At Paymium we spent lots of time and energy talking about Bitcoin to our regulating bodies, the Banque de France, the ACP (French equivalent of the American SEC), TRACFIN (AML French supervising body) etc. We engaged all these resources with one goal in mind : get these people to know Bitcoin, advocate our beloved crypto-currency and listen to them, help them think until they finally reach the same conclusion as we did : there's nothing wrong with people being free.

There's nothing wrong with people freely exchanging value, we don't hurt anybody, we're not forcing anyone to use Bitcoin, we simply want to see our dream and the future of money become a reality.

After all this patient work and lobbying we're finally happy and proud to announce that Bitcoin-Central.net becomes today the first Bitcoin exchange operating within the framework of European regulations. Since 2010 we kept learning, when mtgox got kicked out of France for not complying with the law we learnt from it, when our banks gave us a hard time we learnt from it, when we discussed with smart people on these very forums we learnt from it.

From monitoring the regulatory field we learned that TRACFIN knew about Bitcoin, that the ECB knew about Bitcoin. And that they were both worried.

So we felt that if no one went there, and told these people about Bitcoin, they would come to us anyway.

We're therefore extremely proud and happy to announce that Bitcoin-Central.net will be raising the bar for all the other exchanges, at least the ones operating in Europe.

We're announcing today that Bitcoin-Central.net is getting, through a partnership with Aqoba, allowed to operate like a bank, (or more precisely like a PSP which is basically the same as a bank, just without the debt-money issuing part).

Some people might argue that regulation is a bad thing. We respect this opinion, but we'll have to agree to disagree.

But this is not only some regulatory detail, it has dramatic implications for us, our users, and... our competition

Let's go over a couple of them:

• Our user's funds will actually be held at Aqoba's partner financial institution under the user's name, they will be separate from Paymium's funds (on the other hand, all of other exchanges funds for example sit in the same account, and are considered by their bank to be their corporate property)
• Our user's accounts will be protected by the "Garantie des dépôts" which is the French equivalent of the American FDIC (the insurance cap applies to each account individually, and not to the sum of all user balances, so unless your EUR balance exceeds 100kEUR your fiat is 100% insured by the French taxpayer)
• Each account will in a few months get its very own IBAN number, users will be able to use it as any other bank account, have their salaries and pensions sent there and have them automatically converted to Bitcoin if they so wish)
• Each user will soon be able to order its own debit card that will use their EUR and BTC balance to honor purchases and cash withdrawals
• We'll have direct access to the banking networks which will let us 100% automate all incoming and outgoing transfers
• Corporations will have an actual financial institution talking with them if they wish to start accepting Bitcoin and be safe from a regulatory point of view
• Paymium will have a much better legal standing and a much higher attractivity for second and third-round investors
• Paymium will be in a much better position to make its vision become true : make all our transactions, be they denominated in crypto or fiat currency, flow through the pipes of the Bitcoin network

BUT, that doesn't mean more hassle for our users, since we know exactly what is legally required we can already tell them that a simple ID will remain sufficient to fully verify an account.

It's a big day for me and Paymium, and it's a major milestone for this community.

This is just meaningles announcement. There is pretty high counterparty risk involved, because company A uses Company B and Company B uses Company C to offer "legal service". All this services grew up on bitcoin phenomenon, but real financial background lacks.

There are other companies that have real payment licence in EU, offering Bitcoin service, have full backround integration, many payment options etc.

[Cryptoman]

I'll just leave this here...

Intersango is the oldest and largest exchange to not get hacked.  Your money is probably safer there than any other exchange.

Nope, that would be Bitcoin-Central.net, open-source exchange, older than Britcoin (aka Intersango). Operating smoothly since December 2010. Never hacked.
Since Intersango is apparently unable to keep it together we're launching a new GBP market. Lowest fees available (free incoming wires, 0.99 GBP outgoing wires, 0.498% trade fee)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=63877.msg1296575#msg1296575

Moral of the story: never brag about your security.

[giszmo]

I'll just leave this here...

Intersango is the oldest and largest exchange to not get hacked.  Your money is probably safer there than any other exchange.

Nope, that would be Bitcoin-Central.net, open-source exchange, older than Britcoin (aka Intersango). Operating smoothly since December 2010. Never hacked.
Since Intersango is apparently unable to keep it together we're launching a new GBP market. Lowest fees available (free incoming wires, 0.99 GBP outgoing wires, 0.498% trade fee)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=63877.msg1296575#msg1296575

Moral of the story: never brag about your security.

Oh that was what came to my mind, too but they claim still to be able to brag about not having lost any money to a security breach. I hope that their silence means they are still investigating if they actually had a breach rather than that they are counting bitcoins to find out if their claim of no lost coins is true.

[marcus_of_augustus]

'Best' hacks are when they have no clue what just happened 

... the "wtf hack".

[muyuu]

This will make some extra dough for people who intended to sell but couldn't

[Joost]

This will make some extra dough for people who intended to sell but couldn't

Kinda sucks for people who had pending buy orders out.. *Cough* 

[molecular]

davout, what will happen to existing orders? Will you clear the orderbook?

Please give plenty of advance notice before reopening if you don't because I'd like to pull some sell orders obviously.

EDIT. Sorry, both questions are answered on the page:

A lot of people have asked about the state of orders currently pending. Due to the recent and important price fluctuations we will cancel some outstanding orders before reopening. For example if the average price stays above 100 EUR/BTC we will cancel all asks below 110 EUR/BTC. No trades will be reversed.

We also don't want to take anyone by surprise and as such will give a 24h notice before trades start to get executed again.

[Boussac]

I'll just leave this here...

Intersango is the oldest and largest exchange to not get hacked.  Your money is probably safer there than any other exchange.

Nope, that would be Bitcoin-Central.net, open-source exchange, older than Britcoin (aka Intersango). Operating smoothly since December 2010. Never hacked.
Since Intersango is apparently unable to keep it together we're launching a new GBP market. Lowest fees available (free incoming wires, 0.99 GBP outgoing wires, 0.498% trade fee)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=63877.msg1296575#msg1296575

Moral of the story: never brag about your security.

This was no bragging but simply stating facts.
To stick to facts:
Instawallet was hacked last week but bitcoin-central user balances are safe and NOT affected. The bitcoin-central site was taken off line for security maintenance to upgrade the servers environment.

[grondilu]

This was no bragging but simply stating facts.

Bragging often consists in stating facts:

to talk with excessive pride about what one has, can do, or has done.