Problems with bitcoin-24.com WARNING! UPDATE!

[donjoe]

they can either do what they sold their service as or they can't and if they can't then they should refund everyone.

That would all be nice and fine, except it depends a lot on what legal classification Bitcoin trading falls under at this time. If it's considered more akin to gambling than banking, it could very well be argued that you aren't entitled to any refund. I don't think we'll really know until we see a few Bitcoin-related lawsuits and get the judicial system's take on Bitcoin. Until then what you're seeing is that people mostly expect Bitcoin not to be recognized or protected by the state as any kind of property or real value.

[c0rw1n]

they can either do what they sold their service as or they can't and if they can't then they should refund everyone.

That would all be nice and fine, except it depends a lot on what legal classification Bitcoin trading falls under at this time. If it's considered more akin to gambling than banking, it could very well be argued that you aren't entitled to any refund. I don't think we'll really know until we see a few Bitcoin-related lawsuits and get the judicial system's take on Bitcoin. Until then what you're seeing is that people mostly expect Bitcoin not to be recognized or protected by the state as any kind of property or real value.

FWIW The French IRS officials have said that they're not sure if Bitcoin is money, a raw material or a liquid asset or the tax applying to added values.

"A l'heure actuelle, nous ne disposons d'aucune information concernant la nature (monnaie, matière première, valeur mobilière ?) des bitcoins et la fiscalité applicable aux plus-values de cessions réalisées.
Regrettant de ne pouvoir répondre à votre attente,
X.Y., CONTROLEUSE FIP"

[yucca]

they can either do what they sold their service as or they can't and if they can't then they should refund everyone.

That would all be nice and fine, except it depends a lot on what legal classification Bitcoin trading falls under at this time. If it's considered more akin to gambling than banking, it could very well be argued that you aren't entitled to any refund. I don't think we'll really know until we see a few Bitcoin-related lawsuits and get the judicial system's take on Bitcoin. Until then what you're seeing is that people mostly expect Bitcoin not to be recognized or protected by the state as any kind of property or real value.

FWIW The French IRS officials have said that they're not sure if Bitcoin is money, a raw material or a liquid asset or the tax applying to added values.

"A l'heure actuelle, nous ne disposons d'aucune information concernant la nature (monnaie, matière première, valeur mobilière ?) des bitcoins et la fiscalité applicable aux plus-values de cessions réalisées.
Regrettant de ne pouvoir répondre à votre attente,
X.Y., CONTROLEUSE FIP"

Very interesting thanks for relaying!

[diego1000]

any news?

[ivanc]

Simon will process the Bitcoins withdrawals. I'm pretty sure of that.
However he needs to reconcile the accounts first. Remember that his trading engine is not working properly, all the numbers and balances are wrong, it is a big mess.
First of all, he needs to fix that, then send the Bitcoins withdrawals.
Then, he will process the money withdrawals.

Let's not call him a scammer, he wasn't running his exchange as a profit making scheme. He's just incompetent.
The problem is that not enough people warned us that this exchange was flaky, although it was very clear from his noob messages on forums. The community should have said STOP, loud, before it was too late.

[horsebox1]

Simon will process the Bitcoins withdrawals. I'm pretty sure of that.
However he needs to reconcile the accounts first. Remember that his trading engine is not working properly, all the numbers and balances are wrong, it is a big mess.
First of all, he needs to fix that, then send the Bitcoins withdrawals.
Then, he will process the money withdrawals.

Let's not call him a scammer, he wasn't running his exchange as a profit making scheme. He's just incompetent.
The problem is that not enough people warned us that this exchange was flaky, although it was very clear from his noob messages on forums. The community should have said STOP, loud, before it was too late.

I've fiat currency balance in there that doesn't have a withdrawal request against it because i cant get on to make one + before this mess could only withdraw to the limit a day.

A statement would go a long way,, i cant sleep at the moment.

[donjoe]

Yeah, at the very least it would be nice to know that the reason he's been letting the orders execute one by one is that he (or someone) is in the process of untangling the engine/database mess and getting everyone's accounts to a comprehensible state.

[zemario]

Yes, apparently he posted on the forum last year.

A big problem is that apparently, Simon didn't know what a database transaction was until last month. That's what his post on stackexchange shows.
For those who are not versed in software developement, i will sum up quickly: his database will end up with a lot of erroneous transactions and balances, especially if the trading volume is high.

This is really bad. I think we need to ask to delete his post on stackexchange (and then delete my present post on here). It's the same, once people know that the second biggest exchange was run by a young beginning developer with no knowledge of transactions, it will be a big shock. I'm sure that even the MtGox developers are not that bad. And still, everybody is laughing at them after the debacle.

Simon needs help. He's alone, facing all this. He's the developer, the lawyer, the customer support. Now his accounts are frozen. And he's only 24.

Let's go to bed.

See you guys  

looks like i've lost a couple of grand but this attitude of feeling sorry for people who have made a lot of money off people is bs. they can either do what they sold their service as or they can't and if they can't then they should refund everyone. people here seem to have the attitude oh this guy gave it a go and failed let's applaud him....he has thousands of bitcoins profit. let him fail after paying back everything he owes. as it stands he's a fraudster.

tell me why bit coin withdrawals are closed? it has zero to do with banks anywhere.

This.
Nailed it.
As it stands he is a scammer.

[donjoe]

Bitcoin withdrawals could be closed because it isn't known yet what the law will force him to do. If the law completely ignores Bitcoins and just forces him to repay all the EUR he owns, while at the same time the Polish insist on keeping his account locked, then his only recourse will be to sell the BTC to get EUR and pay his EUR debts first. If he let the BTC fly away right now, he'd be potentially restricting his ability to comply with some legal obligations he may be slapped with.

Besides, if the orders and account balances aren't sorted through first, he doesn't necessarily have good information on who is a legitimate owner of how many BTC anyway. What if some people acquired more BTC than they had a right to when the engine went crazy and then immediately issued BTC withdrawal orders? If he served those orders he'd be making some of the engine's errors unfixable.

[k8]

and what you think will happen to those who deposited to the polish account, I made a deposit on the day before, thorugh the PLN currency option...

[ivanc]

Again, please refrain from posting non-rational statement and keep the thread on-topic.

Simon cannot process the withdrawals (BTC or fiat). First of all, he has to sort the database out. Remember that his whole thing is mess and he's not an experienced developer.
Once he's confident that the database is sorted, he can start with the withdrawals.

My fear is, this database problem has been going on for a very long time (months probably), and was probably even worth before (with time, he probably improved as a developer). This mean that a lot of people ran away with fiat/BTC that they shouldn't have had. I would suspect that he was able to keep things running because of the growth of his platform and the number of new users and deposits.
Basically, this could be a Ponzi scheme, excepted that I don't think he was benefiting from it. Only some unethical bug exploiters did. I also think that Simon was checking his database every few days at least and see if the disrepancy was big. If it really was, he would have shut down the exchange earlier.

Let's see what happens.
I'm going to give you my personal guess about the status:
- Overall, Simon fucked up the engine and money was lost, with no turning back
- the lost money probably doesn't exceed 20% of the total amount of the current assets he has
- some additional money was frozen (in Germany or Poland). We don't know how much there was there. But one thing that has a high probability, is that this money will be frozen for a very long time. Investigations like this one take months/years. Especially if there is a lot of IT involved.

To sum up:
- if get 50% of our fiat, i think we're lucky.
- we should be able to get 80% of our BTC back.


Remember, I have 21,000 EUR in there + 100 BTC
At that time, it was worth 45,000 EUR.

Not the happiest guy in the world today  

[HaldenCoin]

Looks like a reasonable situation analysis.
Hope you all get all your values back!!

[gugubagiBTCplease]

i hear more and more that hes not a very good developer.
thats everthing else but good. how should he know if some backdoor is lurking on his database-server?
i mean the site seems to me quite big. why didnt he get some people to help him? like they do with open source projects...
why didnt he made a dedicated site like www.helpme.bitcoin-24.de like some kind of blog where he could ask everything you would ask on a programming-forum but with the feature that hes the only one who can post questions. there are a lot of programmers in the bitcoin-community who would have been happy to help him, im sure.

if he wants to get back to his hobby, he must do something like this, else 24 will run into problems again and again and...

[Taduliauskas]

Does it helps to think so pessimistically about this situation without knowing any verified facts ?

As far as I know, and saw, the engine went nuts for an hour or two maximum, the effect there visible, and we know for sure, that the trading engine was broken for that period of time. Guesses about weeks or months without any proofs is not rational statement, it only makes situation worse, because, weak-nerves people, can believe in your statements blindly, and start panic, which can lead to delayed date of market salvation.  

I completely agree and recommend for everyone to stay calm and do not send dozens of emails to Simon, with foolish questions about FIAT or BTC withdrawals. At the moment it's just not possible, to satisfy all the customers which intends to withdraw either BTC or FIAT, because of the broken engine problem mentioned above. Nobody is special, and no one will get his BTC until the problem is solved and the solution is found.

I am not, making any personal guesses, because this situation is quite unique, and there is no assurance that it will be solved soon or it could take a bit longer. It just wont help. At this moment, the best thing you can do is just continue living, concentrate on other things, wait patiently and then the times come, withdraw your money.

i hear more and more that hes not a very good developer.
thats everthing else but good. how should he know if some backdoor is lurking on his database-server?
i mean the site seems to me quite big. why didnt he get some people to help him? like they do with open source projects...
why didnt he made a dedicated site like www.helpme.bitcoin-24.de like some kind of blog where he could ask everything you would ask on a programming-forum but with the feature that hes the only one who can post questions. there are a lot of programmers in the bitcoin-community who would have been happy to help him, im sure.

if he wants to get back to his hobby, he must do something like this, else 24 will run into problems again and again and...

Nobody born as a "good developer", "good singer", "good mathematician", "good engineer" or "good anything else". The market is not perfect, nobody is, it's commendable, that one guy, not a huge company with millions of dollars, created a market, which became so popular and helped people to trade with almost no fees. He's learning, people improve only by facing and solving problems, sitting on a couch wont lead you far.

Instead of coming here and writing this not very valuable comment, you could reviewed your ideas on a paper and send them to Simon with an offer to help improve the exchange.

[gugubagiBTCplease]

you talk about months/years... you forgot "never".

im a little upset from this guy. i mean he knew at the very first moment, the first customer, the first deposit, the first entry in his database, that he got other peoples mony in his responsibility.
i heard about a bug which went on since 4 weeks and no change here. i mean what did he think? thata the problem will get solved from itself? ok maybe hes not that guilty because this happend at the very same time where big players like MtGox and others had problems. who ever triggered this thing...
but if i ran that service and experience problems i would go and get some help. i mean at least a security-guy should have been onboard.

i didnt had 49.000 € on bitcoin-24, by far not as much and i had it in bitcoins. but im not a rich person and thats why i am upset, i feel the loss of that money.

i dont know but if someone behaves like that, hes probably one of those persons i wouldnt just like. ok he run that service free and so on, but finally was that really free?

[Miz4r]

Hope this gets resolved soon before it explodes in the media, this was the biggest euro/btc exchange site so it's not a small thing. I also have most of my fiat and btc stalled there, so I can't really buy or trade much anymore until this is fixed.

[donjoe]

im a little upset from this guy. i mean he knew at the very first moment, the first customer, the first deposit, the first entry in his database, that he got other peoples mony in his responsibility.

And everyone who put their money into BTC should've known from the first day that their money could evaporate in an instant and that they were taking a huge gamble. That's why smart investors all over the place keep telling everyone over and over: don't invest more money than you're comfortable losing.

[gugubagiBTCplease]

Nobody born as a "good developer", "good singer", "good mathematician", "good engineer" or "good anything else". The market is not perfect, nobody is, it's commendable, that one guy, not a huge company with millions of dollars, created a market, which became so popular and helped people to trade with almost no fees. He's learning, people improve only by facing and solving problems, sitting on a couch wont lead you far.

Instead of coming here and writing this not very valuable comment, you could reviewed your ideas on a paper and send them to Simon with an offer to help improve the exchange.

1.) how do you know what i write on paper and help to improve who?

2.) yeah nobody is born as a programmer,you're right. (but maybe a few) but i can learn and improve by writing a shell-script which displays me the current exchange-rate of what ever and not learning "real-life"-database-programming with the hard earned money of thousands of people. in this case i would seek for big help. you take that a little bit to easy i think. (maybe you didn't lose anything?)

3.) for me, YOUR comment was not valuable at all, because you just do what a lot of people do in forums: "tell other people to not complain and instead they should do something about it like being productive" well, thats an old shoe, a really old shoe.

4.) im not complaining, i try to express some ideas to see what people think about it thats all, i don't need you explaining me the old shoe... you taught me nothing new here

5.)"almost no fees" im not so sure about that anymore.

6.)i didnt attack this person in no way, so why you come up with this, you probably feel very smart criticize other peoples thoughts.

greets

[gugubagiBTCplease]

im a little upset from this guy. i mean he knew at the very first moment, the first customer, the first deposit, the first entry in his database, that he got other peoples mony in his responsibility.

And everyone who put their money into BTC should've known from the first day that their money could evaporate in an instant and that they were taking a huge gamble. That's why smart investors all over the place keep telling everyone over and over: don't invest more money than you're comfortable losing.

yeah youre right but i knew that at the very first time. but still im upset because i lost money (may i please, thanks). and i still think its not really serious what he did. that has nothing about to do with not knowing what gamble means. i think its not serious to go all there alone, with that much money. why are you people always comment other peoples posting and think you can teach them.
and by the way, i think even the smartest investor has feelings and gets upset if he looses alot of money.

[Taduliauskas]

Nobody born as a "good developer", "good singer", "good mathematician", "good engineer" or "good anything else". The market is not perfect, nobody is, it's commendable, that one guy, not a huge company with millions of dollars, created a market, which became so popular and helped people to trade with almost no fees. He's learning, people improve only by facing and solving problems, sitting on a couch wont lead you far.

Instead of coming here and writing this not very valuable comment, you could reviewed your ideas on a paper and send them to Simon with an offer to help improve the exchange.

1.) how do you know what i write on paper and help to improve who?

2.) yeah nobody is born as a programmer,you're right. (but maybe a few) but i can learn and improve by writing a shell-script which displays me the current exchange-rate of what ever and not learning "real-life"-database-programming with the hard earned money of thousands of people. in this case i would seek for big help. you take that a little bit to easy i think. (maybe you didn't lose anything?)

3.) for me, YOUR comment was not valuable at all, because you just do what a lot of people do in forums: "tell other people to not complain and instead they should do something about it like being productive" well, thats an old shoe, a really old shoe.

4.) im not complaining, i try to express some ideas to see what people think about it thats all, i don't need you explaining me the old shoe... you taught me nothing new here

5.)"almost no fees" im not so sure about that anymore.

6.)i didnt attack this person in no way, so why you come up with this, you probably feel very smart criticize other peoples thoughts.

greets

Could you please first read consistently what I wrote, and then reply ?

1. I was talking about these ideas circumstantial presentation to Simon directly...

i mean the site seems to me quite big. why didnt he get some people to help him? like they do with open source projects...
why didnt he made a dedicated site like www.helpme.bitcoin-24.de like some kind of blog where he could ask everything you would ask on a programming-forum but with the feature that hes the only one who can post questions. there are a lot of programmers in the bitcoin-community who would have been happy to help him, im sure.

   
2. You've got a point here, but where is that mark, when you can call yourself an amateur or pro. When you know how to code one programming language or five ? I mean, come on, he couldn't be stupid or incompetence and create one of the biggest markets. Look at mtgox with a lot of earnings and still failing even more then btc24. No one is immune of failing.

3-4.You can categorize or call it how you like. But still I see no arguments, that trying to look at situation calmly is worse than complaining.

5-6. ?_?

Anyway no need to answer, I have no interest in discussion off-topic. People come here to follow the progress of the market, as I do too.