Bitstamp: Less than 19,000 BTC lost !!!

[haploid23]

My question is why are so many people leaving funds on exchanges like they're banks? We all know this is a possibility.

I see this mentioned all the time. Sure it's easy to just say "DON'T LEAVE BTC ON THERE", but when someone actively trades on an exchange, there's no other way. You need BTC or fiat readily available in case of an unexpected dip or jump in price. It takes about an hour for bitsamp to credit your account if you deposit BTC (6 confirmations), so depositing funds right when you see a dip is already too late.

[jbreher]

Sure it's easy to just say "DON'T LEAVE BTC ON THERE", but when someone actively trades on an exchange, there's no other way. You need BTC or fiat readily available in case of an unexpected dip or jump in price.

Yup. Not only do you get market risk, but counterparty risk besides. Just a cost of doing _that_ type of business. Factor it in when you're doing your cost/benefit analysis.

[Nagle]

... owners/scammers all just follow the same wordpress template during the situation:

*insert 'down for maintenance page'
*insert 'we have been attacked, please allow us time to address the issue' splash page message
*insert 'we assure your old funds are safe, please bear with us' update message
*insert 'we are terribly sorry but due to the losses we have to close up shop as we are insolvent' finality message, as you strung along users for over a month with enough time to flee your native country, change your legal name, and enjoy your millions you scammed from your own users 

Painfully true. We never seem to hear "We've brought in outside accountants, and here they are, and here's their full audit report", or "we've brought in the police, and here's Detective ABC, who will report on the status of the investigation", or "immediate refunds are available by contacting the lawyers who are managing our shutdown".

I urge anyone in the UK with substantial money in Bitstamp to use the "statutory demand" procedure to compel them to pay up. From the UK goverment web site:

You can make a statutory demand to ask for payment of a debt from an individual or company.

Anyone who’s owed money can make a statutory demand and you don’t need a lawyer.

When someone receives a statutory demand, they have 21 days to either settle the debt (or) reach an agreement to pay.

If they don’t make an agreement, you can start ... winding up a limited company that owes more than £750.

This is a big hammer. You can take Bitstamp into liquidation if they don't pay up. The UK is a "pay up or else" country. The UK used to have debtors prisons, and while they've lightened up a bit on debt enforcement in the last century, they're still tougher on debtors than the US or Japan. (Ireland is even tougher.)

You can only do this if you have an address in the UK, though. Otherwise, you need a lawyer in the UK.

[mayax]

The overtly optimistc/blind will defend these guys til they burn down to the ground.


IMO, all these supposed 'hacks' of exchanges were nothing more than inside jobs.  Gox, Cryptorush, Coinex, Mintpal, Bitstamp...the list goes on forever.  This is stolen money..and the owners/scammers all just follow the same wordpress template during the situation:

*insert 'down for maintenance page'
*insert 'we have been attacked, please allow us time to address the issue' splash page message
*insert 'we assure your old funds are safe, please bear with us' update message
*insert 'we are terribly sorry but due to the losses we have to close up shop as we are insolvent' finality message, as you strung along users for over a month with enough time to flee your native country, change your legal name, and enjoy your millions you scammed from your own users 



At least with Mintpal, they admitted it.  But at the same time, after reading that whole fiasco, even that seems a bit shady because it's 2 owners deferring blame to a rogue member.  And I have heard zero updated on the court proceedings that supposedly started 3 months ago (and nobody has even verified or attended it)...to which they even raised a good 5 digits worth of bitcoin charity for their supposed prosecution money.

Ridiculous lol.

I think the same.

in this case(Bitstamp), hm...I am not sure what to say...

What I am SURE is that all the big "players" are a gang. I include the chineses exchangers too.

Bistamp is related with Ripple, Bitcoin Foundation and others. Their shareholders are shareholders for many other bitcoin companies.

i think they will cover the loss because the scandal will be TOO BIG and it will involve all these companies and Bitcoin will crush.
Bitfinex, Coinbase are related with Bitstamp. Bitstamp is processing their orders.

They have no interest to comprise all these companies when they are making millions.


So, they are a gang who is manipulating the market how they want and each of them are taking a piece of the cake named Bitcoin.

a simple proof is these days. Bitstamp hacked, people in panic, a lot of sells and the Bitcoin price is raising

[turvarya]

The overtly optimistc/blind will defend these guys til they burn down to the ground.


IMO, all these supposed 'hacks' of exchanges were nothing more than inside jobs.  Gox, Cryptorush, Coinex, Mintpal, Bitstamp...the list goes on forever.  This is stolen money..and the owners/scammers all just follow the same wordpress template during the situation:

*insert 'down for maintenance page'
*insert 'we have been attacked, please allow us time to address the issue' splash page message
*insert 'we assure your old funds are safe, please bear with us' update message
*insert 'we are terribly sorry but due to the losses we have to close up shop as we are insolvent' finality message, as you strung along users for over a month with enough time to flee your native country, change your legal name, and enjoy your millions you scammed from your own users 



At least with Mintpal, they admitted it.  But at the same time, after reading that whole fiasco, even that seems a bit shady because it's 2 owners deferring blame to a rogue member.  And I have heard zero updated on the court proceedings that supposedly started 3 months ago (and nobody has even verified or attended it)...to which they even raised a good 5 digits worth of bitcoin charity for their supposed prosecution money.

Ridiculous lol.

I think the same.

in this case(Bitstamp), hm...I am not sure what to say...

What I am SURE is that all the big "players" are a gang. I include the chineses exchangers too.

Bistamp is related with Ripple, Bitcoin Foundation and others. Their shareholders are shareholders for many other bitcoin companies.

i think they will cover the loss because the scandal will be TOO BIG and it will involve all these companies and Bitcoin will crush.
Bitfinex, Coinbase are related with Bitstamp. Bitstamp is processing their orders.

They have no interest to comprise all these companies when they are making millions.


So, they are a gang who is manipulating the market how they want and each of them are taking a piece of the cake named Bitcoin.

a simple proof is these days. Bitstamp hacked, people in panic, a lot of sells and the Bitcoin price is raising

I don't think many people who don't have funds on Bitstamp are panicking.

[Dilemma]

Bitstamp said that they will open today
Bu now still i cant use them
it smells bad..

[rammy2k2]

AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE TO OUR CUSTOMERS:

January 6, 2015, 12:34am UTC: We have temporarily suspended Bitstamp services. Bitstamp customers can rest assured that their bitcoins held with us prior to temporary suspension of services on January 5th (at 9am UTC) are completely safe and will be honored in full.

On January 4th, some of Bitstamp’s operational wallets were compromised, resulting in a loss of less than 19,000 BTC. Upon learning of the breach, we immediately notified all customers that they should no longer make deposits to previously issued bitcoin deposit addresses. To repeat, customers should NOT make any deposits to previously issued bitcoin deposit addresses. As an additional security measure, we suspended our systems while we fully investigate the incident and actively engage with law enforcement officials.
This breach represents a small fraction of Bitstamp’s total bitcoin reserves, the overwhelming majority of which are held in secure offline cold storage systems. We would like to reassure all Bitstamp customers that their balances held prior to our temporary suspension of services will not be affected and will be honored in full.

We appreciate customers’ patience during this disruption of services. We are working to transfer a secure backup of the Bitstamp site onto a new safe environment and will be bringing this online in the coming days. Customers can stay informed via updates on our website, on Twitter (@Bitstamp) and through Bitstamp customer support at support@bitstamp.net.

- Bitstamp Team

Source: https://www.bitstamp.net

Can they cover it from their cold storage ? 19,000 BTC is equivalent to more than 5 million USD at current market price.

they clearly said 19k BTC aint no problem for them, as u even posted. why are u asking again if u posted answer your question ?

[HarmonLi]

Bitstamp said that they will open today
Bu now still i cant use them
it smells bad..

Where did they say that? They never said that. On the first day they said they wanted to give an ETA later that day (which they did). Then they said it would take them approx. 24 hours until they got their internal system back up from the backup in a new safe location - they did. Now they are saying it will take approx. 24-48 hours until they are available again. Doesn't look to bad in my books!

[jaberwock]

The overtly optimistc/blind will defend these guys til they burn down to the ground.


IMO, all these supposed 'hacks' of exchanges were nothing more than inside jobs.  Gox, Cryptorush, Coinex, Mintpal, Bitstamp...the list goes on forever.  This is stolen money..and the owners/scammers all just follow the same wordpress template during the situation:

*insert 'down for maintenance page'
*insert 'we have been attacked, please allow us time to address the issue' splash page message
*insert 'we assure your old funds are safe, please bear with us' update message
*insert 'we are terribly sorry but due to the losses we have to close up shop as we are insolvent' finality message, as you strung along users for over a month with enough time to flee your native country, change your legal name, and enjoy your millions you scammed from your own users 



At least with Mintpal, they admitted it.  But at the same time, after reading that whole fiasco, even that seems a bit shady because it's 2 owners deferring blame to a rogue member.  And I have heard zero updated on the court proceedings that supposedly started 3 months ago (and nobody has even verified or attended it)...to which they even raised a good 5 digits worth of bitcoin charity for their supposed prosecution money.

Ridiculous lol.

I think the same.

in this case(Bitstamp), hm...I am not sure what to say...

What I am SURE is that all the big "players" are a gang. I include the chineses exchangers too.

Bistamp is related with Ripple, Bitcoin Foundation and others. Their shareholders are shareholders for many other bitcoin companies.

i think they will cover the loss because the scandal will be TOO BIG and it will involve all these companies and Bitcoin will crush.
Bitfinex, Coinbase are related with Bitstamp. Bitstamp is processing their orders.

They have no interest to comprise all these companies when they are making millions.


So, they are a gang who is manipulating the market how they want and each of them are taking a piece of the cake named Bitcoin.

a simple proof is these days. Bitstamp hacked, people in panic, a lot of sells and the Bitcoin price is raising

I don't think many people who don't have funds on Bitstamp are panicking.

Some people might wonder were and when the coins will be dumped sold

[firewire2013]

I don’t understand why the coins can’t be traced to the hackers.

If Bitcoin address 1234 sells to 4321 and 4321 sells to 100 other wallets, when those 100 wallets dump to an exchange can't the police just trace it back to the source?

I think there should be a credentials checking system for creating wallets, for example when someone sign’s up for a wallet they provide ID, the crypto addresses that are created from the wallet are then legally binding to that person. This ID information is not publically available, but instead locked up within the Bitcoin network protocol. Ok, I understand there will be some level of administration and the whole process will need to be automated as much as possible to reduce cost overhead. In the same way Bitcoin transactions are processed using "Bitcoin Miners", maybe add on to the existing protocol, some sort of "Identification Miner" which has connections to credit reference agencies. In fact, let’s not have people and make this completely automated, isn’t the world heading that direction anyway? Although, I suppose someone would need “the key” to unlock ID information, which would mean a form of centralisation. I think.

It’s only an idea, what the heck do I know, I’m no programmer and certainly not an expert in BTC. Just some guy who really wants BTC to succeed and enjoys a bit of mining   

[Nagle]

Bitstamp booth at CES, yesterday.

Looks like they never made it to Vegas.

Where is their CEO right now?

[OhShei8e]

I don’t understand why the coins can’t be traced to the hackers.

That's difficult in one step I think. But as a first step you could blacklist stolen coins and don't trade those coins. Private mixing don't helps much, because in this case you would need 19k clean coins to get the taint under 50% and the tainted coins would still distinguish from others. This is at least not a technical problem but a political issue in the community:

https://bitcoinfoundation.org/forum/index.php?/topic/505-coin-tracking/

tldr: Community don't want this for religious reasons. Do not discuss with religious fanatics. I also think that most exchanges do not want it. Gox was an inside job for a example. Today the big mixing services exchanges are in China. 0+0=8; nuff said.  

[Pustul]

I don’t understand why the coins can’t be traced to the hackers.

If Bitcoin address 1234 sells to 4321 and 4321 sells to 100 other wallets, when those 100 wallets dump to an exchange can't the police just trace it back to the source?

I think there should be a credentials checking system for creating wallets, for example when someone sign’s up for a wallet they provide ID, the crypto addresses that are created from the wallet are then legally binding to that person. This ID information is not publically available, but instead locked up within the Bitcoin network protocol. Ok, I understand there will be some level of administration and the whole process will need to be automated as much as possible to reduce cost overhead. In the same way Bitcoin transactions are processed using "Bitcoin Miners", maybe add on to the existing protocol, some sort of "Identification Miner" which has connections to credit reference agencies. In fact, let’s not have people and make this completely automated, isn’t the world heading that direction anyway? Although, I suppose someone would need “the key” to unlock ID information, which would mean a form of centralisation. I think.

It’s only an idea, what the heck do I know, I’m no programmer and certainly not an expert in BTC. Just some guy who really wants BTC to succeed and enjoys a bit of mining   

The whole point of bitcoins is to send currency to someone without 3rd party! What you propose is like using a bank wire...

[newIndia]

I don’t understand why the coins can’t be traced to the hackers.

If Bitcoin address 1234 sells to 4321 and 4321 sells to 100 other wallets, when those 100 wallets dump to an exchange can't the police just trace it back to the source?

I think there should be a credentials checking system for creating wallets, for example when someone sign’s up for a wallet they provide ID, the crypto addresses that are created from the wallet are then legally binding to that person. This ID information is not publically available, but instead locked up within the Bitcoin network protocol. Ok, I understand there will be some level of administration and the whole process will need to be automated as much as possible to reduce cost overhead. In the same way Bitcoin transactions are processed using "Bitcoin Miners", maybe add on to the existing protocol, some sort of "Identification Miner" which has connections to credit reference agencies. In fact, let’s not have people and make this completely automated, isn’t the world heading that direction anyway? Although, I suppose someone would need “the key” to unlock ID information, which would mean a form of centralisation. I think.

It’s only an idea, what the heck do I know, I’m no programmer and certainly not an expert in BTC. Just some guy who really wants BTC to succeed and enjoys a bit of mining   

In bitcoin, there is a concept of mixing, for which tracing coins may become very very difficult or almost impossible. Services like bitmixer.io offers mixing. Mixing can also be done by trading in exchanges against alt coin.

[ChuckBuck]

Bitstamp booth at CES, yesterday.

Looks like they never made it to Vegas.

Where is their CEO right now?

Looks like they skipped it to work on the restoration:

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitstamp-testing-redeployment-san-francisco-relaunch-24-48-hours/

Not surprising, seems like an all hands on deck situation, so don't blame them for not making a CES appearance.

[fonenumba]

I don’t understand why the coins can’t be traced to the hackers.

If Bitcoin address 1234 sells to 4321 and 4321 sells to 100 other wallets, when those 100 wallets dump to an exchange can't the police just trace it back to the source?

I think there should be a credentials checking system for creating wallets, for example when someone sign’s up for a wallet they provide ID, the crypto addresses that are created from the wallet are then legally binding to that person. This ID information is not publically available, but instead locked up within the Bitcoin network protocol. Ok, I understand there will be some level of administration and the whole process will need to be automated as much as possible to reduce cost overhead. In the same way Bitcoin transactions are processed using "Bitcoin Miners", maybe add on to the existing protocol, some sort of "Identification Miner" which has connections to credit reference agencies. In fact, let’s not have people and make this completely automated, isn’t the world heading that direction anyway? Although, I suppose someone would need “the key” to unlock ID information, which would mean a form of centralisation. I think.

It’s only an idea, what the heck do I know, I’m no programmer and certainly not an expert in BTC. Just some guy who really wants BTC to succeed and enjoys a bit of mining   

In bitcoin, there is a concept of mixing, for which tracing coins may become very very difficult or almost impossible. Services like bitmixer.io offers mixing. Mixing can also be done by trading in exchanges against alt coin.

It is generally more difficult to mix that large of an amount of bitcoin in a short period of time. For example the maximum that bitmixer can "mix" at one time is ~2,000 bitcoin but even mixing this much would mean that there is an increased chance of some adversary figuring out where your coins ended up

[izanagi narukami]

This is the reason why bitcoin keep decreasing ?

because the lack of security...

[fonenumba]

This is the reason why bitcoin keep decreasing ?

because the lack of security...

The price of bitcoin actually spiked when bitstamp opened back up.....to almost $300 (although it did subsequently fall to ~270)

[AwesomeTRADER]

Lol at that.
Moreover, bitstamp stated that it's just a fraction of their reserves, this 19k bitcoins is just a piece of cake out of millions of cakes they have, they also have vcs

[jackyrozario]

Bitstamp is one of the best Exchange.