BitMarket.Eu has closed down

[MPOE-PR]

Double derp  

They labeled me "snitch" for warning people about bitcoinica http://bitcoin-shitlist.com/2012/02/16/paraipan/

I didn't even know that site existed before you linked it.

[1714939741]

1714939741

[1714939741]

1714939741

[1714939741]

1714939741

[M4v3R]

Is he actually saying: "I used YOUR funds to speculate" and "sorry - couldnt know there is risk involved. I am an experienced trader."
 
Do I actually misunderstand the business model of an escrow-service? Where the heck did you see a potential benefit for the user with the Bitcoinica adventure?

Bitcoinica went down quite a while ago - how could you cover up this mess such a long time?

I'm not trying to excuse myself, I know what I've done was wrong. I've just tried to explain my rationale - what I was thinking back then. I have had success trading on Bitcoinica with my own funds, that's why I was encouraged to try to pull of this. Now, I have a lesson learned for my whole life.

Not all funds went to Bitcoinica. There was still some left. I thought that the Bitcoinica issue will be resolved quicker so I could get the funds back. I also worked to improve the site, implemented two-auth system and other things, so the site could earn the missing coins. If it could earn money faster than people were withdrawing funds from it, this all probably could be prevented, but sadly it didn't turn out good.

[sarpar]

Did you claim your loss in the liquidation process? If so we should be able to find you on the list of creditors. Soon including the exact amount.

[disclaimer201]

When shit hit the fan, you should've taken a mandatory trade fee right away, slightly below the 0.5 % of Bitcoin.de so people would still be enticed to use bitmarket. Perhaps 0.25% because you haven't implemented a rating system yet and there was no option for BUY offers for a quite some time.

I think you should still do it if someone is willing to help you out. It'll be tough though because now Bitmarket is quite burned reputation-wise, simply because people will fear to lose their coins. Not sure how you can regain that trust. People are still out there using the site thinking nothing is wrong deserve to be warned. If you won't do it, others probably will and you will lose even more customers. Best to take down the side and stop all trades asap, or freeze all trades or whatever - have a message up with link to the forum, email all customers and see if people are want Bitmarket to open again in a few days or weeks. Bitcoinica could have even pulled that off, but they are just total knobheads and lost even this opportunity for a re-launch. I'd say a couple weeks after the hack it would have still been accepted and at least offered hope that everyone would get their money back.

[M4v3R]

Did you claim your loss in the liquidation process? If so we should be able to find you on the list of creditors. Soon including the exact amount.

Yes, I've sent the claim a while ago.

Best to take down the side and stop all trades asap, or freeze all trades or whatever - have a message up with link to the forum, email all customers and see if people are want Bitmarket to open again in a few days or weeks.

There is a message on the site - once you log in it really stands out and points to this forums thread. I've also halted all trading, so no one will sell Bitcoins he can't withdraw. Trying to make an offer will also take you to this thread.

[amano]

There is a message on the site - once you log in it really stands out and points to this forums thread. I've also halted all trading, so no one will sell Bitcoins he can't withdraw. Trying to make an offer will also take you to this thread.

If I were you, I would get it back up asap, but with a minimum trading fee.
At least this way you can start filling up the pit, bit(cent) by bit(cent).

[amano]

When shit hit the fan, you should've taken a mandatory trade fee right away, slightly below the 0.5 % of Bitcoin.de so people would still be enticed to use bitmarket. Perhaps 0.25% because you haven't implemented a rating system yet and there was no option for BUY offers for a quite some time.

I think you should still do it if someone is willing to help you out. It'll be tough though because now Bitmarket is quite burned reputation-wise, simply because people will fear to lose their coins. Not sure how you can regain that trust. People are still out there using the site thinking nothing is wrong deserve to be warned. If you won't do it, others probably will and you will lose even more customers. Best to take down the side and stop all trades asap, or freeze all trades or whatever - have a message up with link to the forum, email all customers and see if people are want Bitmarket to open again in a few days or weeks. Bitcoinica could have even pulled that off, but they are just total knobheads and lost even this opportunity for a re-launch. I'd say a couple weeks after the hack it would have still been accepted and at least offered hope that everyone would get their money back.

I could not have said this any better, kudos to you!
Relaunch asap, with fee, and try to get some investors to survive the dip. Reputation will be down, but after a while it will bounce back up, investors will know this, and will take the opportunity to get a piece of the pie. It's a risk inverment, but I'm sure there are ways to ensure their stake in this. Hope you can work things out.

[videos4btc]

Pulls out the *popcorn* ....

[repentance]

Relaunch asap, with fee, and try to get some investors to survive the dip. Reputation will be down, but after a while it will bounce back up, investors will know this, and will take the opportunity to get a piece of the pie. It's a risk inverment, but I'm sure there are ways to ensure their stake in this. Hope you can work things out.

He mis-appropriated user funds.  The usual barracudas will be circling, but they know damned will that reputation isn't going to be rebuilt with the person who misappropriated user funds at the helm.  They'll want the whole pie, not a part of it.

And the "hedging" explanation makes no sense at all.  His role was to keep user funds safe.  Any risk of users suffering losses due to price movements was not his risk to manage.  He was putting user funds at risk by using them to trade and especially by using them for shorting.  He was not hedging anyone's risk except perhaps his own and nor was it his role to do so.  He was straight out gambling with other people's funds and would likely have lost them regardless of what happened with Bitcoinica.  I'm surprised he didn't "invest" user funds with pirate to offset the Bitcoinica losses given howwell thought out his "hedging" plan was.

[disclaimer201]

If you hadn't earned anything through the side but worked for it day in and out I wouldn't want to bet on your integrity of not touching funds either to earn at least some interest for part of the user funds. So, please member of this "community" - don't pretend like any of you guys who possibly stealing electricity or misusing your company's resources that it would never have crossed your minds to earn interest or short btc. You are all experienced traders and prudent little angels, I'm sure. At the time, shorting wasn't outrageous but something anyone did who halfway followed Btc prices.

[c_k]

I kept majority of "offline" Bitmarket funds there.

Do you have the txid's to show this happening?

[SgtSpike]

If you hadn't earned anything through the side but worked for it day in and out I wouldn't want to bet on your integrity of not touching funds either to earn at least some interest for part of the user funds. So, please member of this "community" - don't pretend like any of you guys who possibly stealing electricity or misusing your company's resources that it would never have crossed your minds to earn interest or short btc. You are all experienced traders and prudent little angels, I'm sure. At the time, shorting wasn't outrageous but something anyone did who halfway followed Btc prices.

I never would.  I'd be much too afraid of losing more than I could repay.  There is NO safe investment in the BTC world.  If I owe debts in BTC (which, if I am holding on to users funds, I essentially would be), then I keep that BTC safe and don't touch it, play with it, manipulate it, or "invest" it in any way shape or form.  That is my responsibility on behalf of the users, whether I am getting paid for it or not.

I am sorry to hear that you sell your integrity for so low a price.

[chiliftw]

Well, this christmas present sucks... My loss is not as high as others posted in this thread but anyway, my 45 BTC are obviously gone and I´m not happy with that. Bitmarket was the only site where every trade went well for me, I never had problems with scam etc so I trusted it. All the more it is disappointing to be scammed by the admin himself. M4v3R, I would like you to do everything you can to find a solution for this. Even a partially payback would be better than nothing. Take your time, but do something about it and let us know - you owe it the users and the whole bitcoin community.

[HorseRider]

Did you claim your loss in the liquidation process? If so we should be able to find you on the list of creditors. Soon including the exact amount.

Yes, I've sent the claim a while ago.

Best to take down the side and stop all trades asap, or freeze all trades or whatever - have a message up with link to the forum, email all customers and see if people are want Bitmarket to open again in a few days or weeks.

There is a message on the site - once you log in it really stands out and points to this forums thread. I've also halted all trading, so no one will sell Bitcoins he can't withdraw. Trying to make an offer will also take you to this thread.

I can feel your good gesture and kindly attitude now, however, it is not right to use the fund of the client to do anything without a serious permission from the users. This is a crime if you are running any real world exchange business. In China, there was death penalty case 10 years ago.

I think the best methods here is try to restructure the debt as soon as possible. tell the users exactly how much the black hole is, and change the unit of debt from bitcoin to fiat money. If you owe 20,000 bitcoin, then it's about 260,000 USD. You can sell the site's code for thousands of USD, and give people serious commitment that you owe them such amount of money. You're live in Europe and if you work and save hard enough, it is possible that you can pay them back in 3 years.

[mralbi]

Pay back 260.000 dollars in 3 years? Thats impossible with "normal" work. even if you earn 150.000 dollars a year, (which is already quite much in poland i assume) you will have to pay taxes and social security first and you also need to pay for rent and food.


Actually the most annoying part for me is, that i went into the bitcoin system because the "bank run" problem is not existing, and now this guy is speculating with users funds more than any normal bank from the corrupt banking system ever would have dared... Lol

I have sent the admin some ideas and i am also willing to invest into his site, but 260.000 USD, thats simply impossible to "earn" back.

[Herodes]

M4v3R, you gambled with other peoples money. This means you are a criminal and should be treated as such.

[btcfaucet]

Just finished a bitmarket-like site for the UK ( https://bitbargain.co.uk ) yesterday, but after such an appalling (yet not unprecedented) event I will hardly find any sellers to float coins. Thanks a lot BM :-(

[Scrat Acorns]

"Hedge funds"

I think the best methods here is try to restructure the debt as soon as possible. tell the users exactly how much the black hole is, and change the unit of debt from bitcoin to fiat money. If you owe 20,000 bitcoin, then it's about 260,000 USD. You can sell the site's code for thousands of USD, and give people serious commitment that you owe them such amount of money. You're live in Europe and if you work and save hard enough, it is possible that you can pay them back in 3 years.

Pay them back out of the goodness of his heart? Never going to happen unless he is forced to do so by the legal system. 260k is a boatload of money to pay off in a country where the average monthly salary is $1.2k. If by work you mean bitcoin related projects then I don't see how can anyone trust him with their money ever again.

[M4v3R]

My plan is to work hard making the site better (finally implement the rating system, and some other things) and introduce a mandatory fee for using it. In return, I can also promise (besides an already tried trading platform) a 24h support for everyone. And of course I promise that something like this will not happen again. I know for some my word on this can mean nothing, but there's no other way for this to work. I'm also still looking for people that wanting to invest in the site. They would get a share of every future profit the site will generate. There are already two people that I'm talking with, but anyone else is also invited to contact me over this.

For the record: over 20 people registered on Bitmarket in last 24 hours. There are now more than 35000 users on the site. The potential for growth and profit is there. With proper execution and a little help from the outside I will be able to return the funds to the users. Let me repeat myself: if I didn't wanted to make this right, I would just make up some sad hacking story, find a big enough tx id on block chain to "prove" it and then dissapear. But that's not going to happen - I've made this mess and I have and will clean it up.

[MPOE-PR]

On a more general note : the time of cowboy style, "one man and his hopes" fiat-BTC exchanges has passed. The exchange market is moving into a new phase. There is room on it for MtGox, on account of its old age and well known brand, and for people like the Frenchies doing that bitcoin-central partner-with-a-bank thing. All other exchanges are going out, and things being what they are the majority of them will be going out uncleanly.

Because of this, keeping money in any other fiat-BTC exchanges than those two is pretty much cruisin' for a bruisin'. Spot sellers may still be safe for a while, select ones may even be safe forever (as they're a subset of the OTC style marketplace), but for better or worse cowboy exchanges are a thing of the past.

Source.

If you hadn't earned anything through the side but worked for it day in and out I wouldn't want to bet on your integrity of not touching funds either to earn at least some interest for part of the user funds. So, please member of this "community" - don't pretend like any of you guys who possibly stealing electricity or misusing your company's resources that it would never have crossed your minds to earn interest or short btc.

Fuck you for even daring to insinuate crap like that. Turn off your computer and never show up around here again, you have no business posting on any forum I read.

In China, there was death penalty case 10 years ago.

China is kinda cool like that.

I think the best methods here is try to restructure the debt as soon as possible

It is not a matter of how soon, restructuring is not possible at all. The value of an exchange that's not on the aformentioned list of two is something in the low hundreds to mid tens of BTC. Lock stock and barrel, the whole shebang. The value of a blown exchange, such as bitmarket.eu or bitfloor.com or so forth is some approximation of zero or epsilon. To restructure tens of thousands in debt atop zero to epsilon equity is an impossibility (except if you have governments and central banks, which BTC doesn't have).

I have sent the admin some ideas and i am also willing to invest into his site, but 260.000 USD, thats simply impossible to "earn" back.

Quite.

Actually the most annoying part for me is, that i went into the bitcoin system because the "bank run" problem is not existing, and now this guy is speculating with users funds more than any normal bank from the corrupt banking system ever would have dared... Lol

Who'd have thought real world problems don't have panacea solutions. Everyone conveniently thinks irl banking sucks because "bankers are evil". This is practically never the case. Real world systems suck because complexity is unbounded and human ability is.