BitMarket.Eu has closed down

[AniceInovation]

Fast question:
Can i resume my dealings in Bitmarket? Will new sales i make be withdrawable from my buyers?

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[onpdm]

Fast question:
Can i resume my dealings in Bitmarket? Will new sales i make be withdrawable from my buyers?

Um, Bitmarket is closed right now ... there're no dealings at all, except that one lonely sale yesterday, who was ever be able to do that.

[galaxy07]

Thank you for your statement, mralbi!

[M4v3R]

Fast question:
Can i resume my dealings in Bitmarket? Will new sales i make be withdrawable from my buyers?

The trading is, as of yesterday, resumed. A mandatory fee of 0.25% was set. All current user balances were moved to "on hold" state, which means that they can't be withdrawn. New funds can be deposited, and you can trade and withdraw them as usual.

This is only temporary though to kickstart the market. There are some new features in works, but this will need assistance from investors. I will announce them as they become available.

Edit: There was already one successful transaction for 3 BTC since the market was opened. The buyer can confirm that he can withdraw them after successful payment if he wish to reveal his username.

[EuSouBitcoin]

Are there any new policies regarding where clients' BTC are held?

[M4v3R]

Because users must have option to withdraw the Bitcoins immediately, and the balance on the server is small, they are stored on the server, like it was previously. Once there is enough funds to be stored offline, I will announce exactly who helds them (probably one of investors) and also post public address of that wallet for everyone to check.

[cpunks]

I've been watching this situation with no small concern.

I did not lose any money (never kept significant amounts in deposit), but I could have.

Regardless, to entirely cease using the site while others try to negotiate a solution to recover from m4v3r's misuse of funds and all which followed...

...to entirely cease using it seems like discarding useful work and functionality. So I will, for the time being, attempt to resume using the site, but for very small trades only, whilst keeping an eye on the forums to check for any complaints by other users, and to see whether the attempt to salvage the site and repay users their funds is proceeding or not.

[pazor]

lets try to use bitmarket.eu again.

i do it!

 

[paraipan]

...

i do it!

 

Then you either have balls of steel or still live on your parents allowance, just saying.

[unixdude]

I haven't logged in for a while but I just caught up with this thread and have to say what a f*** up I have 50 bitcoins (luckily that is all) since 2011 in my account after reading through this thread I thought I better login to check if I can actually withdraw my coins but I can't access them any more as they are classed as on hold (as stated in a post above). Emailed the admin to see if he can actually restore them or not at some point but I'm not holding my breath and I'm not going to use bitmarket again marking it down as another one to avoid.

[unixdude]

But please, don't put me in the same bag with mybitcoin. The guy just dissapeared with people's funds and provided no solution for this. Also, his core business was storing the coins safely, which he completely broke. I on the other hand did everything in my power to provide great exchange experience, and this was going quite well I think. It's a shane that I failed on the storage part...

You cannot be serious.  You stole user funds.  Whether you "invested" them with Bitcoinica, used them to play at the casino, bought lottery tickets with them, used them to play the stock market, placed them with pirate, or spent them on hookers and blow is irrelevant.  Risking other people's funds without their permission is not doing "everything in my power to provide great exchange experience".  If people wanted to risk shorting on Bitcoinica they would have done that themselves rather than leaving their funds with you for safe-keeping.

Don't blame Bitcoinica for the fact that you misappropriated user funds.  That's like blaming the trainer if you'd taken user funds and bet on a losing horse at the race track.

Have to agree with you here, regardless if he admitted anything the fact is he scammed his users funds. Bitmarket.eu can not be trusted while he has anything to do with it regardless how sorry he is, it makes the whole exchange look like a Mickey Mouse operation.  My advice is only use Bitmarket.eu with extreme caution knowing it is run by a scammer by his own admission (harsh but the truth).

[chiliftw]

lets try to use bitmarket.eu again.

i do it!

 

So will I. Despite this very unpleasant situation, my experience with the users of bitmarket.eu are very good and I don´t see a trustworthy alternative to bitmarket at the moment. Nobody knows if, for example, bitcoin.de won´t be a fraud in future. Everybody knew that bitcoin is still in the early adopting phase and there is a good chance of a total loss. So I´m not mad as hell but looking for way of evolving bitcoin trading and - of course - get as many bitcoins back as possible.

The only thing that isn´t clear for me yet, is the how-to of payback of the lost bitcoins. If my calculations are correct, with a fee of 0,25% there has to be a transfer volume of about 8 million bitcoins until the ~20.000 lost bitcoins are earned. Assuming 2.000 BTC transfer volume per month it would take ~334 years (!) to earn the 20.000 BTC (calculation:  100 x 20.000 / 0,25 = 8.000.000; 8.000.000 / 2.000 = 4.000 / 12 month = ~334 years), not including cost for servers etc. This seems unachievable despite my strong believe in bitcoins... But: If every user of the 38.000 bitmarket users is willing to give 0,5 BTC, the job would nearly be done. I don´t know how many accounts are afflicted by the lost - it would be interesting to know and to calculate how much every afflicted account would have to give to return all funds in short(er) time. In my case it would be a better deal to invest (let´s say) another 10 BTC to get my 45 BTC back. I´m willing to do this if there are enough users who think the same way.

That said, I want to propose to payback this investment as well but for the worth of BTC at the moment of investment - meaning, for example: I transfer 10 BTC now. It´s worth about 10 EUR per BTC. So you owe me 100 EUR. Let´s assume the stock price rises further. When you are able to payback, you don´t owe me 10 BTC but 100 EUR, payable in BTC. So if the stock price is 20 EUR per BTC, you have to return 5 BTC to me. If stock price is 5 EUR per BTC, you pay 20 BTC. No money would be lost by investors, only the advantage of rising stock price and, of course, any interest. It would be like buying BTC for 100 EUR at this time to the current stock price. It´s not ideal, but I think this is a far more realistic way to get everyone paid back than expecting the return of same amount of bitcoins invested in this way.

Also, I could image a way of partly return over time: Depending on the BTC collected by fees/donations etc. and the lost BTC of the account, you, M4V3R, could payback in parts. Assume there are 2.000 BTC available of the lost ~20.000 BTC, you could restore 10% of every afflicted account. In my case it would be 4,5 BTC, in case of mralbi it would be 62 BTC. And: When everything is paid back you could give the investors of today an incentive by reducing transaction fees for them.

But, M4V3R: Don´t fuck it up again! Make it as transparent as possible. Do your support and general communications very well. Be an excellent webmaster. Get other people like mralbi involved. It is the foundation of trust which you have to earn again.

[Herodes]

For a unscrupulous individual, there would be no problem claiming that funds are lost in the Bitcoinica debacle a long time ago, when in fact it's only said to cover recent theft.

When the incentive is a lot of money, it's incredible what some people do.. Perhaps evidence already was presented, and in that case, disregard my message, if it is proven beyond doubt, but most things can be faked in the digital world.

At this point, one could chose to trust the operator, or one could chose not to trust the operator. There is a possibility that the operator has indeed learned his lesson, and will never do it again,
but we cannot be sure of this.

My advice would therefore be to shun BitMarket.Eu altogether.

"The only way not to lose is not to play."

[paraipan]

...
So will I. Despite this very unpleasant situation, my experience with the users of bitmarket.eu are very good and I don´t see a trustworthy alternative to bitmarket ...

Stopped reading there, WTF are you talking about? What about Bitstamp, Bitcoin-central, Bitcoin-24 and Btc-e?

Btw, I'm kind of tired listening to "sockies" these days, meet my Ignore-hammer.

[chiliftw]

...
So will I. Despite this very unpleasant situation, my experience with the users of bitmarket.eu are very good and I don´t see a trustworthy alternative to bitmarket ...

Stopped reading there, WTF are you talking about? What about Bitstamp, Bitcoin-central, Bitcoin-24 and Btc-e?

So you unconditionally guarantee that these sites are no fraud either? That´s nice to know In case of fraud I will contact you...

Btw, I'm kind of tired listening to "sockies" these days, meet my Ignore-hammer.

I´m not sure what that means. I just made a suggestion how it could be possible to solve the bitmarket issue...

[unixdude]

lets try to use bitmarket.eu again.

i do it!

 

So will I. Despite this very unpleasant situation, my experience with the users of bitmarket.eu are very good and I don´t see a trustworthy alternative to bitmarket at the moment. Nobody knows if, for example, bitcoin.de won´t be a fraud in future. Everybody knew that bitcoin is still in the early adopting phase and there is a good chance of a total loss. So I´m not mad as hell but looking for way of evolving bitcoin trading and - of course - get as many bitcoins back as possible.

The only thing that isn´t clear for me yet, is the how-to of payback of the lost bitcoins. If my calculations are correct, with a fee of 0,25% there has to be a transfer volume of about 8 million bitcoins until the ~20.000 lost bitcoins are earned. Assuming 2.000 BTC transfer volume per month it would take ~334 years (!) to earn the 20.000 BTC (calculation:  100 x 20.000 / 0,25 = 8.000.000; 8.000.000 / 2.000 = 4.000 / 12 month = ~334 years), not including cost for servers etc. This seems unachievable despite my strong believe in bitcoins... But: If every user of the 38.000 bitmarket users is willing to give 0,5 BTC, the job would nearly be done. I don´t know how many accounts are afflicted by the lost - it would be interesting to know and to calculate how much every afflicted account would have to give to return all funds in short(er) time. In my case it would be a better deal to invest (let´s say) another 10 BTC to get my 45 BTC back. I´m willing to do this if there are enough users who think the same way.

That said, I want to propose to payback this investment as well but for the worth of BTC at the moment of investment - meaning, for example: I transfer 10 BTC now. It´s worth about 10 EUR per BTC. So you owe me 100 EUR. Let´s assume the stock price rises further. When you are able to payback, you don´t owe me 10 BTC but 100 EUR, payable in BTC. So if the stock price is 20 EUR per BTC, you have to return 5 BTC to me. If stock price is 5 EUR per BTC, you pay 20 BTC. No money would be lost by investors, only the advantage of rising stock price and, of course, any interest. It would be like buying BTC for 100 EUR at this time to the current stock price. It´s not ideal, but I think this is a far more realistic way to get everyone paid back than expecting the return of same amount of bitcoins invested in this way.

Also, I could image a way of partly return over time: Depending on the BTC collected by fees/donations etc. and the lost BTC of the account, you, M4V3R, could payback in parts. Assume there are 2.000 BTC available of the lost ~20.000 BTC, you could restore 10% of every afflicted account. In my case it would be 4,5 BTC, in case of mralbi it would be 62 BTC. And: When everything is paid back you could give the investors of today an incentive by reducing transaction fees for them.

But, M4V3R: Don´t fuck it up again! Make it as transparent as possible. Do your support and general communications very well. Be an excellent webmaster. Get other people like mralbi involved. It is the foundation of trust which you have to earn again.

Part of the problem here is that M4V3R is still connected to bitmarket.eu, regardless if he came out on the forums and admitted essentially stealing 20k bitcoins gambling them. The site has no credibility and neither does he any more. To get even close to getting things going he needs to pass on full control to a third party who has credibility, accountability and funds to cover the losses he incurred, all of which I doubt will happen any time soon.

I might sound harsh but I have no sympathy for people who essentially steal other peoples bitcoins and driven by greed looked at bitcoinica thinking they would make themselves a fortune without losing anything. Common sense should have prevailed here, if it sounds too good to be true chances are it is.  Purely based on these actions alone you have to question his ability to think rationally, his ability to operate an exchange site for any length of time before doing a similar sort of thing and also his morales.

[M4v3R]

Part of the problem here is that M4V3R is still connected to bitmarket.eu, regardless if he came out on the forums and admitted essentially stealing 20k bitcoins gambling them. The site has no credibility and neither does he any more. To get even close to getting things going he needs to pass on full control to a third party who has credibility, accountability and funds to cover the losses he incurred, all of which I doubt will happen any time soon.  

Yes, I am still in charge of Bitmarket, but that will change. I understand that this is cruicial for the exchange to be credible again.
If deal we're discussing with mralbi gets executed, he'll receive full control over exchange and stored funds. As he already stated, he already has a registered company, that can back BitMarket operations. I may, or may not be technical administrator / provide support for the site - that will be for him to decide. I will still be rensponsible for reimbursing users funds, though, it's not that I want to run away from all this. Every Bitcoin that is part of this deal will go to compensate users.

Edit: One idea I have which will enable Bitmarket to make money (which will be used for reimbursement), is to enable people to buy Bitcoin via Paypal using the service. We already did this once with mixed results, but I have confidence that this time I have measures that will make this possible. I'll announce this as soon it's done.

[galaxy07]

Hello M4v3R!

To make sure: in December 2012 and before, funds that could not be withdrawn were marked as "frozen" in the overview after a withdrawal attempt (and they continued to be shown as frozed, even after the withdrawal was executed). Then you changed something in the end of December, and after that the funds waiting to be withdrawn did not appear in the overview at all. So now I have two withdrawals pending, totaling 327 BTC, but the account balance says 0 BTC, (0 BTC frozen).

Please check if that is the behavior that you intended and if my claims are well registered.

Acount: hafey

[Sultan]

What's the strategy for getting people their money back?

Do we wait for the fees to build up until we have 20k worth of bitcoins?

Or every month, however much has been earned, will be distributed amongst the users who have frozen bitcoins?

OR will this new company bail you out entirely?

Many thanks

[disclaimer201]

Imho, the fees should go to all creditors (including the investors) right away, just not sure if distributed equally or in chronological order.

One tiny chance I see of turning this disaster around has to do with the fact that bitmarket is a service that is much needed. I just don't know how I can trust it anytime soon. It must be 100% assured that people who trade on the side can withdraw their coins. I will wait and watch the situation for a couple months before making a decision.