The bitomat exchange lost their wallet - selling exchange for 17,000 BTC!!

[bitlotto]

https://bitomat.pl/Home/Statement (In polish)
http://reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/j4t58/3rd_largest_bitcoin_exchange_has_lost_its/

[elggawf]

Yeah, it looks like someone didn't read the docs for AWS before setting up an exchange. :\

Also, how you end up holding ~$250k (at least) and not having off-site backups, I do not know.

[RandyMarsh]

GOOD GOD!? Were they really the 3rd largest?

[the founder]

GOOD GOD!? Were they really the 3rd largest?

yea they were behind tradehill...  for some reason bitcoins are highly adopted in Poland.

[stellan0r]

you guys know what we say about Poland in Germany?

[kokojie]

no off-site backup for a production site? how amateurish. But this is actually bullish news for BTC, 17000 BTC has just been destroyed, this should increase the value of the rest of the BTC by almost 2%.

[the founder]

no off-site backup for a production site? how amateurish. But this is actually bullish news for BTC, 17000 BTC has just been destroyed, this should increase the value of the rest of the BTC by almost 2%.

It would be fitting justice if some of those coins were stolen .  but most likely they were earned the hard way,  mining or alpaca socks.

[Gabi]

"lost"? Do they think we are idiots? 17000btc and no backup, nothing? Ahahahahah

More like it was a scam.

[elggawf]

you guys know what we say about Poland in Germany?

"That was a mistake?"

[julz]

no off-site backup for a production site? how amateurish. But this is actually bullish news for BTC, 17000 BTC has just been destroyed, this should increase the value of the rest of the BTC by almost 2%.

I think it's closer to almost 1/4 of a percent.

[joulesbeef]

But this is actually bullish news for BTC, 17000 BTC has just been destroyed, this should increase the value of the rest of the BTC by almost 2%.

It's not really good news, the decrease in supply is dwarfed by the increases of anxiety over bitcoin.

If you are a relatively new investor to bitcoin and read about the 25l stolen, the mtgox hack, third biggest exchange loses all it's coin, mtgox shows coins at 1.3 million each, the dwolla charge back hack and mybitcoin one of the largest and most recommended online wallet services went dark this weekend and their doesnt seem to be any way to contact the owner or any info on it.

This is a dark day for the coin, and this shit needs to stop happening for it to become mainstream. A stock exchange can fall but they will still eventually find your stocks. These coins just vanished.

[Gabi]

third biggest exchange loses all it's coin

Someone really believe they "lost" 17000btc? 

[nakowa]

But this is actually bullish news for BTC, 17000 BTC has just been destroyed, this should increase the value of the rest of the BTC by almost 2%.

It's not really good news, the decrease in supply is dwarfed by the increases of anxiety over bitcoin.

If you are a relatively new investor to bitcoin and read about the 25l stolen, the mtgox hack, third biggest exchange loses all it's coin, mtgox shows coins at 1.3 million each, the dwolla charge back hack and mybitcoin one of the largest and most recommended online wallet services went dark this weekend and their doesnt seem to be any way to contact the owner or any info on it.

This is a dark day for the coin, and this shit needs to stop happening for it to become mainstream. A stock exchange can fall but they will still eventually find your stocks. These coins just vanished.

a day extremely dark.

[stellan0r]

you guys know what we say about Poland in Germany?

"That was a mistake?"

no I mean the jokes (sorry to the Polish ppl here )

You know where you find your car after it got stolen? (you can replace car with any good you want  )

[Sukrim]

you guys know what we say about Poland in Germany?

"That was a mistake?"

no I mean the jokes (sorry to the Polish ppl here )

You know where you find your car after it got stolen? (you can replace car with any good you want   )

Oh I know another one:

Why do Russians always steal 2 cars in Germany?

- Because on the way home, they have to pass through Poland!


Anyways:
Maybe it still can somehow be recovered? Pay the hoster to rip out the HDD asap and run some undelete programs... I don't know which infrastructure they used though, so it might or might not help.

Edit:
Ok, read the statement... where exactly does it state how many BTC were lost? It only says, bitomat.pl is for sale for 17 000 BTC, not that 17k have been "flushed".

[tvbcof]

I, for one, am not buying an EC2 failure.  Attaching EBS is kindergarten stuff in cloud compute land.  I don't think there would be any way for someone to develop and operate a trading platform in AWS without being keenly aware of the details at this level, and anyone with two neurons exchanging data would be mighty careful with the coin storage aspect.

I'd say that the scammers in the community, at least, are anticipating a downturn in BTC value (or more hopefully, increased competition from legitimate players) and are exiting stage left.  Good bye and good riddance.

[2112]

I, for one, am not buying an EC2 failure.

This wasn't an EC2 failure. It was an EC2 customer's failure to read the documentation and understand the tools he's using. EC2 by default deletes the volume used to boot the instance after the instance gets stopped. The MySQL database survived because it resided on the separately attached volume which would need to be explicitly deleted.

I spoke with people working in Poland and apparently this was all around amateur hour, including all the futile attempts at recovery. Apparently the bitomat.pl operator even served Amazon with a legal demand using Polish legal process. Also, he didn't incorporate the business and operated it as an after-hours hobby while keeping full-time job at www.ceneo.pl.

[GeniuSxBoY]

third biggest exchange loses all it's coin

Someone really believe they "lost" 17000btc? 

More like stolen.

[spruce]

Wouldn't the exchange owner be criminally liable for the losses because of not exercising reasonable care? Has anyone filed a police report?

[Johnny Pizza]

This is really just the free market in action people. So some coins went "missing" somehow, who knows? Now you know not to deal with any Polish people as they have proven themselves to be slimy scumbags out to ruin bitcoins reputation.