bitcoin-central

[desired_username]

I wonder if it is safe to use bitcoin-central?

I can't seem to find updated information on the status of them. the orderbook seem to be working though.

cheers

[greBit]

Be prepared for a long wait for SEPA transfers!

Transferwise confirmed that the euros arrived at their bank account 8 days ago. But I am still waiting.

Customer support non-existent - they have stopped even acknowledging my messages in the support tickets

I would advise you to check out alternatives, Bitstamp worked better for me.

[oda.krell]

Similar conclusion here. At first, I was very much drawn to bitcoin-central because they seem to be one of the few (maybe the only) exchanges that is trying to become "legitimate" (partnering with a bank, or bank-like institute), and the messages of one of their employees on this forum were extremely helpful.

But then the Instawallet hack happened, and while I don't believe for one second that they're trying to scam anybody, the response (or rather: lack thereof) was more than unsatisfactory. I think they're doing the right thing (90 days reclaim period), but the way they communicate their stuff is very very offputting.

For that reason, I decided to use bitstamp instead. So far, I'm very satisfied (although I admit, there remains some doubts because bitstamp only has a bank account at a bank, Unicredit, which, as far as I know, could close down at any time, similar to what happened at other exchanges before). But as far as the bitstamp people themselves are concerned, I have a very high opinion of them.

[glub0x]

i have mitigate vision of this site that i use quite a lot.

On the good side :
1) Your euro money seem to be insured with a legal statuts (unique)
2) You can withdraw sepa and deposit via sepa if you register . For me after the first one, it's quite fast 4days.
3) They are active on the forum, publicly exposed.
4) They have some liquidity. Not for huge trading but still enough i think.

On the bad side :
1) They are linked to the instawallet fiasco...
2) The support is VERY erratic. Simple question can be left over for weeks. Mainly if you use the support interface of the platform (better send a mail straight)
3) Engine was unresponsive for super low volume of trade. Did you ever complain about gox? was much worse. This seem to be fixed a few days ago...
4) bitcoin withdraw are controlled manually... It can take days!


Good luck with them!

[jonytk]

Well it should be ok, it's in France after all.

However the problem i see is the same as mtgox,
 unless they update the trading engine on huge volatility days it's lagging,

i'm talking about up to 5 minutes. i experienced it the meltdown day,
 when i tried to sell at 180Eur and of course, no way! i losed 50%

About davout, i think he's working on the api, i saw an update on their api web-page, they are building some app or trading program.

well, good luck with that if you site start to lag like hell, i mean, it will be awesome a secure app, or even a trading program but
first they have to beef up their servers. It's not fair only bots can place orders when there's huge swing in the prices.

With more and more exchanges going down the pressure it's going up and up.
Davout hire more people please!

[btbrae]

Will never use bitcoin-central again, after the way they failed to communicate with Instawallet customers after the hack and the way they have refused to communicate with the community on other issues like the police report number. It is times like that you get a true picture of who you are doing business with and this knowledge is a very valuable tool going forward (ie. steer clear). Good luck though.

[Spaceman_Spiff]

My sepa wire came through today, after a week (felt longer, but thats what the log says and I have a terrible sense of time  ).

[pyedpyper]

Will never use bitcoin-central again, after the way they failed to communicate with Instawallet customers after the hack and the way they have refused to communicate with the community on other issues like the police report number. It is times like that you get a true picture of who you are doing business with and this knowledge is a very valuable tool going forward (ie. steer clear). Good luck though.

This.

[Boussac]

Will never use bitcoin-central again, after the way they failed to communicate with Instawallet customers after the hack and the way they have refused to communicate with the community on other issues like the police report number. It is times like that you get a true picture of who you are doing business with and this knowledge is a very valuable tool going forward (ie. steer clear). Good luck though.

There were about 16 000 funded instawallets and I see only a very small group of the same people (pyedpyper, tvbcof, Phinneaus Gage, Herodes) trying to exploit the incident to damage our reputation on this forum.
The fact that you confuse them with the bitcoin "community" demonstrates you are being judgemental and biased.
There is absolutely no good or bad way to communicate about an investigation after the service suspension: the only thing that matters is whether or not you get your refund.
The consequences of the attack are borne by Paymium, not by the users.
All the users are able to file their claims to get a refund.

[Herodes]

There were about 16 000 funded instawallets and I see only a very small group of the same people (peydpyper, tvbcof, Gaga, Herodes) trying to exploit the incident to damage our reputation on this forum.

The last time you talked about wallets, you claimed there was 3 millions, as to attempt to give the impression that it was such a lot of work to organize the reclaim process.

I am not exploiting the incident to damage your reputation on the forum, what should the incentive for that be ? What I do see however, is that there's been many hacks and scams going on since the start of bitcoin, and I don't want to see users affected by this - again.

As the current situation is, I would advise anyone to be careful with bitcoin-central. Boussac has handled the instawallet incident less than stellar, and we don't know yet if any funds actually will be paid out after the 90-day claim process.

Personally I've offered technical help in regards to the incident, and I've tried to come with suggestions, all being interpreted by Boussac as condecending and as insults.

I'm an upstanding individual that hates to see people being scammed. I want bitcoin businesses to be transparent and to conduct business with honour, and have responsive and good customer service.

There were repeated requests for a police report number in several threads, and this was not provided for days and days despite Boussac being reported as logged in, and responding to other issues in the same threads, then Boussac posted it in the french sub-forum, and some other user pulled it out and posted it in the english part of the forum.

Instead of taking a personal grudge, Boussac and everyone else working with him, should focus on their business, not on petty argumentation in an unprofessional way.

If anyone wants to use bitcoin-central, then surely do your own investigation and see if you feel safe. I don't.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Will never use bitcoin-central again, after the way they failed to communicate with Instawallet customers after the hack and the way they have refused to communicate with the community on other issues like the police report number. It is times like that you get a true picture of who you are doing business with and this knowledge is a very valuable tool going forward (ie. steer clear). Good luck though.

There were about 16 000 funded instawallets and I see only a very small group of the same people (pyedpyper, tvbcof, Phinneaus Gage, Herodes) trying to exploit the incident to damage our reputation on this forum.
The fact that you confuse them with the bitcoin "community" demonstrates you are being judgemental and biased.
There is absolutely no good or bad way to communicate about an investigation after the service suspension: the only thing that matters is whether or not you get your refund.
The consequences of the attack are borne by Paymium, not by the users.
All the users are able to file their claims to get a refund.

This is too good! I only wish I would have thought of it: Blame the people you stole the most from, making us the bad guys.

Are you still planning on attending Bitcoin2013 so that I can shake your hand, then afterward discuss the matter over a brewski?

Back on the 17th of March I was concerned, but davout put me at ease. Shortly thereafter, InstaWallet, et al., went dark, with davout no longer to be found. Yet, I'm the one that's being claimed to exploit the situation.

Madness!

EDIT: Utter Madness!

[btbrae]

The fact that you confuse them with the bitcoin "community" demonstrates you are being judgemental and biased.

Not really biased actually. I'm not an Instawallet customer, and never was. I was a bitcoin-central customer, and the contrast in communication towards the two groups of customers was disheartening as I'd enjoyed using the bitcoin-central service. Let's just say that the bitcoin-central post-hack updates were slow and lacked clarity. But Instawallet customers; they were scrambling for answers for days, you left them high and dry for a substantial period of time. Not cool.

the only thing that matters is whether or not you get your refund.

You're very very wrong on that, I imagine if that is your attitude towards doing business then there is nothing I or anyone else can say that will change your mind.

[pyedpyper]

Will never use bitcoin-central again, after the way they failed to communicate with Instawallet customers after the hack and the way they have refused to communicate with the community on other issues like the police report number. It is times like that you get a true picture of who you are doing business with and this knowledge is a very valuable tool going forward (ie. steer clear). Good luck though.

There were about 16 000 funded instawallets and I see only a very small group of the same people (pyedpyper, tvbcof, Phinneaus Gage, Herodes) trying to exploit the incident to damage our reputation on this forum.
The fact that you confuse them with the bitcoin "community" demonstrates you are being judgemental and biased.
There is absolutely no good or bad way to communicate about an investigation after the service suspension: the only thing that matters is whether or not you get your refund.
The consequences of the attack are borne by Paymium, not by the users.
All the users are able to file their claims to get a refund.

Boussac,

Your disingenuous comments must be refuted, I'm sorry.

I have zero interest in "exploiting" this incident. What could I possibly gain from that?

The truth (and which you seem incapable of grasping) is that you ignored probably 20 or more requests over a 2 week period (on various threads and by PM) for some basic information related to the hack you claim happened, specifically verifiable information that a police report had been filed.

You were totally active on the forums during this time, and yet you completely ignored all the people asking. And yes, a few of us, myself included, took you to task on this. We respectfully asked for, and then finally demanded, your professionalism and transparency. And you seem continually unable to provide this.

So because you are again trying to place blame for the bad blood on the forums anywhere else than upon your own shoulders, I'll show the truth again right here, right now:

You have also been asked repeatedly to provide information as to who the "independent auditors" are who are conducting the "computer forensic analysis" on the alleged hack. You have repeatedly ignored this question too.

As you hopefully are capable of understanding, many Instawallet account holders would like to be assured that what you say is happening, is actually happening. We would like the means to verify if Paymium is being straight about this whole thing or not (and there are real signs indicating that Paymium is not).

So here, in front of everyone again: Please will you name the independent auditors so that we can verify with them that they have indeed been appointed by Paymium to conduct a forensic analysis.

If you ignore this question again, then again everyone gets to see your lack of professionalism, and it raises further doubts regarding the integrity of Paymium, who you are representing on these forums.

Here's your chance again to be a professional. I hope you take it. If you don't, then don't complain again about the responses you get.

Additionally in response to your comments above, you have already suggested implicitly that account holders with more than 50 BTC my not get paid back in full. Now you state "The consequences of the attack are borne by Paymium, not by the users.". Does this mean you are committing Paymium to paying back all account holders in full?

Your clear and explicit clarification will be appreciated.

[pyedpyper]

Boussac, your response to the above please.

Both questions of course but particularly whether you are saying that all Intstawallet account holders will be getting their full balance returned.

Thanks

[Herodes]

If anyone wants to use bitcoin-central, then surely do your own investigation and see if you feel safe. I don't.

https://bitcoin-central.net/

Apr. 25 2013 15:30 CEST UPDATE

Dear all, we'd like to give everyone an update as to what exactly is happening, has happened, and will happen in relation to the recent events at Bitcoin-Central.net.

Here are a few questions that require an immediate answer.
Have funds been lost?

A few hundred Bitcoins have been stolen from our hot wallet.
Will users lose funds?

No. We will cover 100% of the theft.
How did it happen?

Someone managed to reset the password from our hosting provider web interface, this enabled the attacker to lock us out of the interface and request a reboot of the machine in 'rescue' mode. Using this, the attacker copied our hot wallet and sent away what was present.

This very hosting provider (OVH) had been compromised a couple of days ago, in the exact same way, leading to loss of funds on mining.bitcoin.cz.
What is the plan?

We have taken the decision to suspend the service for the time being. Coming up with a different security approach will take some time. We owe it to our users to be on the safe side.

As a consequence we will refund everyone who so wishes up to the last cent and satoshi and take the needed time, without rush, to come up with a platform, an infrastructure and procedures to meet the new challenges that are faced by the Bitcoin exchange ecosystem at large.

Doing the right thing is not always easy. It's ok, riding the Bitcoin is not for the faint of heart, we'll take the time to prepare and we'll be back.
How exactly will this happen?

We will reopen the platform tomorrow, but won't be accepting any new Bitcoin or Euro deposits. Users will be expected to clear their accounts in order for us to settle all balances.

People who have very small EUR balances that aren't practical to wire will be offered a settlement in Bitcoin at generally available market rate at the time of the settlement.

Users will be able to place wire transfer orders, they will be processed as usual. The Bitcoin transfers will be processed directly from our cold-storage and will be sent as daily batches.
Can we refund everyone?

Yes, because Bitcoin-Central has, is, and will always will be full-reserve. We can refund everyone at the same time.

Unclaimed balances will be held until they are claimed, if they are still not claimed when the platform reopens they will be made available to the relevant imported user accounts. All Bitcoin balances left with us will be held in cold storage.
When will I be able to get my BTC/EUR back?

As soon as we re-open you will be able to request your account settlement which will be processed as fast as possible.

We aim at reopening the web interface on April 26th at 14:00 CEST. In case of delays we will post additional updates.

We thank all our users for their trust and business.
We thank everyone that supported us when everything was starting to get hard.