Reading the news on the site could have been much more helpful than making a scam accusation thread.
Dear Crypto-Trade user,
We're aware that the past days have been very stressful and nerve-racking for those of you who haven't been able to withdraw their Bitcoins and especially for those who still have "old" pending withdrawals from February, 10th. Please let us hereby explain what happened the past days, because it's important for us, that you - as beeing the most important part of Crypto-Trade - understand that we're not solely responsible for the current (unsatisfactory) situation and that we're standing on the same site fighting against an attack that hit the Bitcoin protocol.
Back in February, 6th we were thrilled and highly motivated to bring Crypto-Trade to a new level (don't worry, we still are) by adding new coins, improving support, PR and communication with our community. Remember that we were fully prepared for the launch of Ultracoin days before the initial start and that we were happily expecting every new user for our small but feature-rich exchange. But then something unforeseen happened which is now known as 'Bitcoin malleability attack'.
At this point allow us to quote a short passage from Coindesk about what this malleability is all about:
(below you can find the link to the article for those of you who want to read more about this exploit)
"It's an attack that lets someone change the unique ID of a bitcoin transaction before it is confirmed on the bitcoin network. The change makes it possible for someone to pretend that a transaction didn't happen, if all the right conditions are in place."
To sum it up, we were confronted with the following issues that all happened at once:
- A lot of new users (maybe users who were completely new to digital currencies at all) came to our site with high expectations
- Bitcoin malleability attack generated lots of false Bitcoin withdrawals and created thereby many many many support tickets we are still working on
- We had a glitch that postponed the proper configuration of new servers and caused issues with the site (lag)
You can imagine that the last weeks were a hell for our developers and that the whole Crypto-Trade team is still suffering from this attack as much as you.
But remember: this issue affected all exchanges, MtGox, Bitstamp, BTC-E and many more. Some of them went completely down during the attack, some of them even stopped their withdrawals, but all of them are still working on the backlog that was caused by this - like we do.
Status quo:
We're nearly finished of reviewing all Bitcoin transactions that were stuck since February, 10th and we are thankful for your patience and understanding.
Crypto-Trade never lost or stole a coin from its users, so please don't worry if some withdrawals seem to last longer than others.
That's just because we need to take a deeper look into a few withdrawals that got flagged as a double spending in our software and we just want to make sure, everything went right here.
If everything is sorted out, we will continue with the implementation of new features, increasing the general trade volume, add new coins to the trading page and start some really nice giveaways! Until then, please give us some time to complete the backlog and only report the most urgent issues.
But to fulfill a feature request that many of you wanted to see on Crypto-Trade and that was easy to do, we added UTC/LTC to our trading page.
It can be found here:
https://www.crypto-trade.com/trade/utc_ltcTo those of you who came to Bitcoin as the shit started to hit the fan and who are now concerned about their coins and the greater meaning of digital currencies in general:
Bitcoin is still a very young technology, but it has already successfully overcome several challanges, i.e. the Silk Road Crash, the "Chinese ban" and now a DoS attack on its transaction ID protocol. With every of those challenges, Bitcoin became stronger afterwards and so will it be this time.
Best regard,
Crypto-Trade team
Links:
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-bug-guide-transaction-malleability/http://www.righto.com/2014/02/the-bitcoin-malleability-attack-hour-by.htmlbut the good news is:
ear Crypto-Trade user,
Right away the most important part: we have fixed the security hole, added new security layers to our servers and re-enabled trading on
www.crypto-trade.com!
Yes, you heard correctly: while reading this newsletter, trading is already possible again. But you certainly want to know a few more details, so let us continue..
What's even more important by now: Against all odds we didn't run away with your coins and money - they are all still completely under your control, as promised by us. So, if there is at least something positive to be said about the past days, neither we nor you were goxed (whatever that means). To give you a short summary of what happened to the stuck coins and fiat money that were affected by the trading shutdown, pls take a look at the following list:
- All stuck withdrawals (except PayPal and a few OKPAY's) whether they belonged to a crypto currency or to fiat money were processed.
- PayPal withdrawals were canceled and you should find the related amount of fiat money in your Dashboard again (details below).
- OKPAY withdrawals will be completely processed by no later than the next 1-3 days. We transfered most of them, but now we hit our monthly account limit, so we need to upgrade it before the rest goes through.
- All deposits were released and should already appear in your Dashboard as well.
Regarding PayPal: we're currently not able to process withdrawals via PayPal, that's why we canceled all pending transfers and credited the money back to their owners. Furthermore we temporarily deactivated the option to pay out via PayPal and recommend everyone to use any of our currently available payment processors that can be found here:
https://crypto-trade.com/feesWe're aware that this situation might cause some troubles to our US citizen, since PayPal was their only option to withdraw fiat to their bank account, so be sure that we're working on a solution for this issue. You already might have heard the reason for this situation elsewhere: As a matter of fact, we were obliged to use a third party processor for all PayPal withdrawals, because PayPal's Terms of Service don't allow their customers any business related to crypto currency trading. Unfortunately our third party processor (Payeer) stopped its cooperation with PayPal, so there's currently no way for us to pass your money safely to PayPal.
So, what happened exactly?
The bug that made it possible to steal us approx. 30,000 USD came with the implementation of our latest server. It was a glitch in the new server's setup and not active before. As mentioned above, we fixed the issue so it should not appear again. We want to apologize for all the troubles caused by the downtime: this was clearly a human error and we're deeply sorry for that. Well.. needless to say that the loss was all on us, too. At this point we want to thank all of you who believed in us and who didn't spread causeless panic. More than ever we're full of hope to become the best exchange out there and even if we're still far from beeing perfect, we might have proven to be trustworthy.
What's next?
While this newsletter's main purpose is to inform you about the current situation, we don't want to end it without having outlined some further actions regarding Crypto-Trade. We're already working hard on Crypto-Trade v2 which will include many of those new features that were requested by you! From "C" like chat history scrolling without auto-refresh, to "T" like trading performance improvements - we surely will find at least one feature for every letter in the alphabet. Our todo list is almost endless - so are the opportunities! Of course we're going to look into new coins that would match our current agenda as well as we're going to find better/faster/safer ways to transfer your fiat money throughout the internet. So stay tuned for further updates!
One more thing: Of course our Twitter retweet contest will be extended! New deadline is Sunday, February 9th (12:00 AM GMT). If you want to enter for a chance to win 100UTC+100WDC+100FTC make sure to RT the following tweet:
https://twitter.com/Crypto_Trade/status/436608575843340288We will randomly pick 5 lucky users on Sunday - each of them will get Crypto-Trade redeem codes of 100UTC/100WDC/100FTC.
In the meanwhile, please feel free to follow us on twitter (@Crypto_Trade) and on Facebook (
https://www.facebook.com/CryptoTrade to) or drop by at our chatbox to get the latest news about Crypto-Trade.
Best Regards and happy trading!
Crypto-Trade Team
