Bitcoin-24.com matching engine seems broken, site down.

[darnth]

the irony of that is that we the customers can't now get our deposits now because of this seizure of hardware and closure of bank accounts. Something that this seizure was apparently supposed to avoid!

So it's the banks and authorities and not Simon who are preventing us from doing what they accused Simon of preventing us from doing.

Depends. In retrospect it looks like Simon was running his business in violation of european regulations for the prevention of money lending (and financing of terrorism). As posted multiple times in this forum, running such an exchange he needs to verify the identity of at least significant customers (if not all) and needs to report any transactions above 15k euro as well as suspicious transactions at any volume (if someone withdraws 1000 euro 100 times or whatever). In addition he needs to be able to answer questions regarding who is the legal responsible for any customer account at any time.

With no ID verification in place, all of the above doesnt work. If any money laundering then happens (as it seems it did, e.g. from phished bank accounts), as he can not identify who did the trading the dirt sticks to him, as unwitting accomplice due to neglect of precautions.

Simon somehow managed to fly under the radar for some time, but this first set of accusations is already more then enough to close the business, impound all accounts and worst case sentence the manager to up to 2 years of jail time.

So it is certainly Simon's business practice and neglect that caused all this, and he is responsible for running bitcoin24 in an illegal way.

Blaming authorities or banks for closing down illegal business is a tad naive, sorry.

I wonder about this seizure of hardware... surely the hardware was installed in a secure area at a data centre, not located in his own business office? Couldn't be that easy to simply seize?

At least last year he seems to have had his stuff on virtual machinse on rented servers somewhere (evident from his him asking in a forum how to restore deleted files on such a virtual server, as he lost a bitcoin wallet to wiping one server without having backups last year).

How exactly everything is set up and whether it requires physical access to one of his own physical computers (for keys or whatever), no idea. Naively I would agree and say shouldn't be needed and thus hard to seize.

On the other hand if he allows any withdrawals, thats continued support of money laundering, as he still cannot identify customers of course. That would remove the "unwitting" from the accusation making it infinitely more serious.

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[allocater]

We should also point out that in March/April there was a significant amount of people who send SEPA to bitcoin-24, but it never showed up in the account. So maybe the police is right with the "not willing to compensate users"-part.

[alphadude]

All this speculating is sort of pointless, but completely understandable given the EPIC lack of information from Simon. I'm still willing to give it just a little more time IF he starts to comunicate some actual information rather than saying how he feels he is mistreated by the evil banking system.
If there is a reasonable reason why Simon cant pay back or let us withdraw our BTC, then he needs to comunicate that ASAP! Whining about customers who threaten with legal action or worse will not help him at all, and are just a consequence of him not comunicating whats going on in the first place.

I'm pretty certain "justice" will be served eventually anyway. Either we get our money/BTC back, or he will go to jail. I'd prefer the first option, but it's really up to Simon which way this ends...

Daily updates on bitcoin-24.com staitng the progress will suffice for my part not to take legal action. If the current lack of information continues I might give it another week or so...

[MegaBrutal]

I'm pretty certain "justice" will be served eventually anyway. Either we get our money/BTC back, or he will go to jail.

I wouldn't feel myself any better if Simon would go to jail - it wouldn't give my BTC back. And anyway, I don't want him to go to jail, I'm not sure if he really deserves that. It wouldn't be "justice".

I just want my BTC back ASAP from anyone - whether Simon or the authorities give it back, I don't care. (Though I highly doubt the latter would happen, I don't think the authorities would care even the least for our BTC.)

[Newscastix]

All this speculating is sort of pointless, but completely understandable given the EPIC lack of information from Simon. I'm still willing to give it just a little more time IF he starts to comunicate some actual information rather than saying how he feels he is mistreated by the evil banking system.
If there is a reasonable reason why Simon cant pay back or let us withdraw our BTC, then he needs to comunicate that ASAP! Whining about customers who threaten with legal action or worse will not help him at all, and are just a consequence of him not comunicating whats going on in the first place.

I'm pretty certain "justice" will be served eventually anyway. Either we get our money/BTC back, or he will go to jail. I'd prefer the first option, but it's really up to Simon which way this ends...

Daily updates on bitcoin-24.com staitng the progress will suffice for my part not to take legal action. If the current lack of information continues I might give it another week or so...

+1!

Speculation does not help and has never helped and never will!

I urge anyone who has Fiat or BTC stuck in Bitcoin-24 to head over to http://board.btc24-help.com to make a statement that we need regular updates and clear information. If not from him, then from his lawyer.

So far there is no official statement regarding the status of BTC holdings and why they cannot be withdrawn and if anything (hardware) was seized under whose control the BTC are right now.

[alphadude]

+1!

Speculation does not help and has never helped and never will!

I urge anyone who has Fiat or BTC stuck in Bitcoin-24 to head over to http://board.btc24-help.com to make a statement that we need regular updates and clear information. If not from him, then from his lawyer.

So far there is no official statement regarding the status of BTC holdings and why they cannot be withdrawn and if anything (hardware) was seized under whose control the BTC are right now.

Does Simon even follow that board?

As I said, I will personally give it a week or so. I've emailed him and thats enough (or should be at least). If somone from Germany would like to translate what I've written and post it on http://board.btc24-help.com feel free to do so. I've mined all my coins, so my situation is of course a bit different from someone who spent a lot of fiat for their BTC that is now locked away. I'm still pissed off though, but probably to a lesser degree than someon who payed more for their coins.

[bitbadger]

I agree there has to be evidence of movement in this matter. If there isn't then legal action against Simon & Co - and maybe some form of action or petition of the authorities involved - will be the only recourse we have left.

I am not prepared to sit back and twiddle my thumbs for weeks on end and maybe even longer while IRC chats and rumours go back and forth. That's not acceptable to me and probably also not to many other people.

[Newscastix]

+1!

Speculation does not help and has never helped and never will!

I urge anyone who has Fiat or BTC stuck in Bitcoin-24 to head over to http://board.btc24-help.com to make a statement that we need regular updates and clear information. If not from him, then from his lawyer.

So far there is no official statement regarding the status of BTC holdings and why they cannot be withdrawn and if anything (hardware) was seized under whose control the BTC are right now.

Does Simon even follow that board?

As I said, I will personally give it a week or so. I've emailed him and thats enough (or should be at least). If somone from Germany would like to translate what I've written and post it on http://board.btc24-help.com feel free to do so. I've mined all my coins, so my situation is of course a bit different from someone who spent a lot of fiat for their BTC that is now locked away. I'm still pissed off though, but probably to a lesser degree than someon who payed more for their coins.

Sure! He made a post there and he said this will his way of communication from now on.
German Source:
http://board.btc24-help.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=18
Also see the sceenshot within that thread.

Edit: The statement in the thread above has also been translated and posted in the English section of http://board.btc24-help.com/

[panoss]

We should also point out that in March/April there was a significant amount of people who send SEPA to bitcoin-24, but it never showed up in the account. So maybe the police is right with the "not willing to compensate users"-part.

From March!?!And what did these users do?Did they sent a message about the delay and if yes what did bitcoin-24 reply?
The German to English translation was referring to the Polish account being frozen from the beginnings of April.If this is the case then the fact that he didn't change the address for Sepa transactions makes me think:
1.Simon was indeed trying to gather as much money he could and run
2.Simon can't think straight enough to tell customers not to send money to a frozen account (i sent mine 4 days before the website went down)

[mrvision]

Ugh... the situation seems very bad. I see less and less chance that we'll get our BTC back, but I'm still hoping... That money could really change my life...

Someone said (can't quote, it was pages ago) he choose Bitcoin-24 when he got pissed off by Mt.Gox. Same to me. Bitcoin-24 really looked like a legitimate, quality trading site with a nice interface.

Bitcoin-24.com is the biggest bitcoin exchange in Europe and is only surpassed by MtGox in terms of EURO volume.

Also, since it had high volume, it seemed to be stable. I would have never expected it to lose my money. I can't even say that I (and others) were irresponsible or careless when they transferred funds there - or were we? I even did my research.

But then, no sites can be trusted... maybe not even Mt.Gox... If I ever get that money back, I'll store it in a paper wallet, and only expend it when I actually wanna use or trade it (even though, when there are quick moves in price, I won't be able to act quickly...). This is a HUGE problem that we can't trade bitcoins with trust.

I wish I wasn't pissed off on Mt.Gox so much and would have waited a few hours to make the decision to move to Bitcoin-24... And I shouldn't have moved ALL my Mt.Gox account balance to one place anyway...

I have 0 euros and 1.4 bitcoins now. Last week i started with 8000€ in bitcoins that i bought at 5€ each.
I am the one that was gox'd and then went to bitcoin-24.  Now i feel just like you with 0 money in my pocket and bitcoin price going up. That's why i'm starting to build a team and will try to create what i think an exchange should be. Fair prices, fair fees, 1000+ transactions per second, using sockets, i will speak with a lawyer and will have everything in order, and i will explain my business to the bank and cumpliment 1 by 1 every requirment they ask me for.  Fuck simon.

[Amitabh S]

This is looking grim. Poor communication, refusal to take blame for what happened. Not returning BTC.

[aby]

This is looking grim. Poor communication, refusal to take blame for what happened. Not returning BTC.

You're entitled to your oppinion ofcourse, but writing these kinds of messages (you've already conveyed your message multiple times in this thread) aren't really constructive to the thread.
Try to keep faith and think in solutions/actions we can take, rather than freaking out.

Edit: Just so you know, I have a 5-figure sum at stake here.

[arlekyn13]

While the fiat holders are somehow protected by the authorities (even if it'd take a bit longer to recover them), the btc holders are not. There is NO excuse for holding the btc other than the intention to keep them. Since he failed at returning the btc as promised, he now aggravated the scam accusations placed on him and his scheme. Unfortunately, his time in prison (if any) won't return my btcs.

[sbrzol]

While the fiat holders are somehow protected by the authorities ...

lol, i sold XY btc , (in 1 transaction), without any identity proof,   when gox was down,   so what do you think am i  fiat holder?  authorites know nothing about me, and from all others who deposited btc , and not via sepa

[allocater]

The most funniest way for the police to screw this up, would be if they return all fiat to the bank accounts it came from. Because that would not correspond to the btc/fiat they have in the account. Some would end up with double, some with nothing.

[sbrzol]

The most funniest way for the police to screw this up, would be if they return all fiat to the bank accounts it came from. Because that would not correspond to the btc/fiat they have in the account. Some would end up with double, some with nothing.

yes, as i said earlier nobody will get back their btc until eur accounts locked by the authority

[simplydt]

We should also point out that in March/April there was a significant amount of people who send SEPA to bitcoin-24, but it never showed up in the account. So maybe the police is right with the "not willing to compensate users"-part.

From March!?!And what did these users do?Did they sent a message about the delay and if yes what did bitcoin-24 reply?
The German to English translation was referring to the Polish account being frozen from the beginnings of April.If this is the case then the fact that he didn't change the address for Sepa transactions makes me think:
1.Simon was indeed trying to gather as much money he could and run
2.Simon can't think straight enough to tell customers not to send money to a frozen account (i sent mine 4 days before the website went down)

I sent mine 1 hour before the site went down lol, 800euros down a black hole!

[ianspain]

FUCKING DISASTER!!!!!! the only good is that at least the authorities are involved and not doing a pirate

[Moebius327]

The authorities closed Simon's little money laundering, because he had not a single verification procedure. Imagine all the money laundering after a successful phishing. His exchange grand them laundering in 5 mins. Register, use instant sofort banking or giro pay buy bitcoins, transfer. That was the main reason the price at btc24 was always way higher than the other exchanges.This is Simon's fault and he has to take some responsibility and not blame the banks, authorities, and customers.

[Amitabh S]

The authorities closed Simon's little money laundering, because he had not a single verification procedure. Imagine all the money laundering after a successful phishing. His exchange grand them laundering in 5 mins. Register, use instant sofort banking or giro pay buy bitcoins, transfer. That was the main reason the price at btc24 was always way higher than the other exchanges.This is Simon's fault and he has to take some responsibility and not blame the banks, authorities, and customers.

Is he blaming the customers?