Bitstamp most likely will buy back the bitcoins they lost

[ivyleague1985]

Why?

1. If they just escape, there will be serious legal consequences. And the whole media world (CNBC, CNN, etc.) is watching at them.

2. They cannot refund USD. The purchasing price of stolen bitcoins are different: someone purchase at $1000, some at $0.25. If they refund by purchasing prices, many will be unhappy. Also, the market price is changing seconds by seconds. If they refund by the market price, many may be unhappy either because bulls may argue my coin has appreciation potential and I don't want the worthless fiat at all. Finally, if they refund by moving average price, people will argue why use 30 days MA instead of 50 days MA, etc. So refunding USD is near impossible for bitstamp.

For that reasons, I believe bitstamp will quietly buy back the bitcoin from the open market.

[Blazr]

They claim they already have more than enough Bitcoin in their cold reserves to cover the losses. There is no reason to buy it back. IIRC they were operating way over full reserve when they were last publicly audited.

[ivyleague1985]

They claim they already have more than enough Bitcoin in their cold reserves to cover the losses. There is no reason to buy it back. IIRC they were operating way over full reserve when they were last publicly audited.

At this moment, bitstamp may have the incentive to bluff a little bit to stabilize the situation. We cannot know for sure if they have enough reserve to cover their ass.

Anyway, maybe you are right. But both of us are just speculating.

[Blazr]

They claim they already have more than enough Bitcoin in their cold reserves to cover the losses. There is no reason to buy it back. IIRC they were operating way over full reserve when they were last publicly audited.

At this moment, bitstamp may have the incentive to bluff a little bit to stabilize the situation. We cannot know for sure if they have enough reserve to cover their ass.

Anyway, maybe you are right. But both of us are just speculating.

http://www.coindesk.com/bitstamp-passes-audit-overseen-bitcoin-developer-mike-hearn/

They had slightly over full reserve on 24th May 2014. On top of that they "confiscated" unclaimed unverified accounts back in October, which would've increased their reserves quite a bit:

http://www.forexnews.com/blog/2014/10/17/bitcoin-exchange-bitstamp-confiscate-unverified-accounts/

[ivyleague1985]

They claim they already have more than enough Bitcoin in their cold reserves to cover the losses. There is no reason to buy it back. IIRC they were operating way over full reserve when they were last publicly audited.

At this moment, bitstamp may have the incentive to bluff a little bit to stabilize the situation. We cannot know for sure if they have enough reserve to cover their ass.

Anyway, maybe you are right. But both of us are just speculating.

http://www.coindesk.com/bitstamp-passes-audit-overseen-bitcoin-developer-mike-hearn/

They had slightly over full reserve on 24th May 2014. On top of that they "confiscated" unclaimed unverified accounts back in October, which would've increased their reserves quite a bit:

http://www.forexnews.com/blog/2014/10/17/bitcoin-exchange-bitstamp-confiscate-unverified-accounts/

Quoted from the coindesk article: "As of 13:00 CEST 24/05/2014, Bitstamp held 183,497.40310794 BTC in their cold wallet. Combined with the money that was in their hot wallet this totalled to about 45 BTC more than the total customer deposits and Ripple IOUs recorded in their database."

Is this 45 BTC reserve enough to cover the 18K stolen coins?

[coinableS]

1) Bitstamp has enough to cover in their reserve.

OR

2) They buy the 18K coins through second market or another route. They are NOT going to go to finex and place a market order for 18K coins if that's what some people are thinking. Stamp buying 18K coins will have no affect on the price.

[ivyleague1985]

1) Bitstamp has enough to cover in their reserve.

OR

2) They buy the 18K coins through second market or another route. They are NOT going to go to finex and place a market order for 18K coins if that's what some people are thinking. Stamp buying 18K coins will have no affect on the price.

Secondary market is the exchange. Primary market means miners. If you believe they buy from miners, it is understandable to me.

But still, when miners supply the exchanges less coins than before (coz they sold most outputs to bitstamp), will the price go up or not?

Let's assume that, miners usually dump 3600 coins to the open market every week. In the next ten weeks, they will sell half outputs, which is 1800 coins, to bitstamp. Now the supply on the exchange is the remaining 1800 coins. Will this move the price up or down?

[asdlolciterquit]

i don't understand...who care in which way they will refund us? why it's important to you?

[ivyleague1985]

i don't understand...who care in which way they will refund us? why it's important to you?

Yes, coz 18K buy order will affect the price a lot.

[calci]

I am not sure if they actually lost anything . Didn't they say on twitter that all user funds are secure?

[celebreze32]

I am not sure if they actually lost anything . Didn't they say on twitter that all user funds are secure?

No, they made a statement on their website

https://www.bitstamp.net/

On January 4th, some of Bitstamp’s operational wallets were compromised, resulting in a loss of less than 19,000 BTC

[calci]

I am not sure if they actually lost anything . Didn't they say on twitter that all user funds are secure?

No, they made a statement on their website

https://www.bitstamp.net/

On January 4th, some of Bitstamp’s operational wallets were compromised, resulting in a loss of less than 19,000 BTC

Ah thanks. I haven't been following it much .Just saw this today .
Would be really nice of them to cover the compromised bitcoins.

[derpinheimer]

You have to remember how many BTC belong to abandoned accounts. Werent there a couple 100 THOUSAND idle coins on Gox at its demise? That makes the 200k they found more like 33% than 25% if 200k were idle and abandoned.

So, if 20k coins were abandoned, that means they dont really have any need to buy, even if there reserves were only 100%

[log2exp]

Stamp can also play leverage game on finex/okcoin/huobi to drop market price significantly so scope up coins.

[NUFCrichard]

As long as they don't do the same bs as gox and reopen with bitstamp coins that everyone knows are not real bitcoin!
I expect they will buy them back, some on the exchanges and some off the exchanges.

[1Referee]

No one knows what kind of Bitcoin reserves Bitstamp has, perhaps they can compensate the coins that they lost with their own coins.

Bitstamp is a more than decent exchange, it will sort everything out after investigation.

[lay785]

they are expecting everyone to withdraw as soon as they open. they better repurchase 18k coins before they re-open or no one will trust them when they cant process the withdrawals.

[Nagle]

They are expecting everyone to withdraw as soon as they open. They better repurchase 18k coins before they re-open, or no one will trust them when they can't process the withdrawals.

They need $5 million to reopen.  Do they have it? Can they raise it? That's the big question.

[Melbustus]

Bitstamp raised $10M from Pantera Capital in December 2013: http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bitstamp

And the business already generates considerable revenue. I'd bet they have >$5M net assets.

[BitCoinNutJob]

Even if they use cold storage reserves to pay for this they will slowly want to build back whats been lost i should imagine, bullish either way.