Bitstamp will easily recover from this hack

[smoothie]

Why did Stamp shut down all fiat withdrawals, if this was just a "bitcoin hack"?   

That is what I would like an answer to. There should be no directly linked reason to the btc hack that involves USD/fiat wires being halted.

Another big red flag.

[calci]

It already said it will. I am just waiting for their comeback.  I wonder if price will be affected by the comeback, even though nothing is expected.

[Nagle]

Why did Stamp shut down all fiat withdrawals, if this was just a "bitcoin hack"?   

That is what I would like an answer to. There should be no directly linked reason to the btc hack that involves USD/fiat wires being halted.
Another big red flag.

That's the big question. It's very suspicious that Bitstamp is evading answering it.

It's also a concern that Bitstamp's replies, on Twitter and on their own site, are increasingly vague about when they will be back up.

If they try to bring trading back up while limiting withdrawals, assume they're crooks.

[sandykho47]

Of course since Bitstamp is very big exchange site
No wonder they can recover in less than a week

But, i'm sure some people never trading at Bitstamp again

[tokeweed]

Bitstamp hack was an inside job, same as Mt gox

Everyone is way too optimistic, I don't think they will even re-launch

possible. most multi-million dollar heists in history are inside jobs.  i'm not saying the bitstamp hack is, but it is something to consider and think about.

edit:  i'm pretty sure law enforcement officers are investigating bitstamp employees too.

[carlosiness]

after such incidents the price will go down again and again and confidence too in btc world..that's a pity..

[fildza]

after such incidents the price will go down again and again and confidence too in btc world..that's a pity..

That the worst scenario will happen when big company got hacked or shut down. Many new investor will hesitate to invest using this digital currency which have many bad news

[turvarya]

after such incidents the price will go down again and again and confidence too in btc world..that's a pity..

That is really getting boring. The price went up, since the incident.
Nobody cares, who doesn't have funds on Bitstamp and business goes like usual. The times where hacking one Exchange can crush the BTC-price are over.

[freedomno1]

Bitstamp hack was an inside job, same as Mt gox

Everyone is way too optimistic, I don't think they will even re-launch

possible. most multi-million dollar heists in history are inside jobs.  i'm not saying the bitstamp hack is, but it is something to consider and think about.

edit:  i'm pretty sure law enforcement officers are investigating bitstamp employees too.

I'm just hoping this is not another not this shit again case where we get some giant drama brewing in the background
We have had a lot of exchanges shut down to repeat the 2011 2012 ones (instawallet etc) + Gox and mintpal it feels like we are repeating time all over again.
In other words if their is a hydra and they keep doing the same thing and getting away with it they need to get their heads cut off now before we see more repeats (Ryan Kennedy)

[Q7]

I hope what is more important is that after the incident at least they know where the loopholes are and have taken the measures to upgrade their security. Also, what I'm interested is how the coins get lost to the attacker? SQL injection, I'm not sure... but certainly it's not that easy to get hacked in the first place.

[wadili89]

I doubt they were making anywhere near the 19k BTC to cover the loss.
Its not a big problem there are other exchanges and more will be coming up. Unlike Gox which at some point held 80% of al the trades, Bitstamp was another exchange.

[tokeweed]

I hope what is more important is that after the incident at least they know where the loopholes are and have taken the measures to upgrade their security. Also, what I'm interested is how the coins get lost to the attacker? SQL injection, I'm not sure... but certainly it's not that easy to get hacked in the first place.

hence making the inside job angle very very possible.

[BitCoinNutJob]

I doubt they were making anywhere near the 19k BTC to cover the loss.
Its not a big problem there are other exchanges and more will be coming up. Unlike Gox which at some point held 80% of al the trades, Bitstamp was another exchange.

They better hope customers keep faith and stick with them, will be interesting to see on bitcoinity their market share over next month.

[bitbaby]

I don't think the recovery will be that easy plus the people lost a little faith in them and would want to avoid keeping their funds there to trade.

[CoinCidental]

A lot of people are saying that this is the end of Bitstamp. That they've been goxed and that any bitcoins held on the site are now gone. This isn't true. Bitstamp WILL easily recover from this hack. It sucks that this happened, but this isn't really a huge disaster and it should by no means affect the survivability of the company.

On the 5th of January, Bitstamp lost 18,000 BTC from a 200,000 BTC reserve. That's about 9% of the total reserve.

Percentage-wise, this is very similar to the hack that Poloniex suffered in 2014. It lost 12% of its bitcoins due to a technical glitch which was exploited by a hacker. That exchange was able to recover its reserves in just mere months. It has enjoyed a spotless security record since then.

In August 2014, Bter also lost 50 million NXT worth about $1.6 million due to a hacker. After a while, they were eventually able to recover 42 million NXT making their net loss 8 million NXT and a couple hundred BTC which they sold to the hacker for bargain prices in exchange for the return of the bulk of the stolen NXT. Today, they're still operating perfectly fine.

Bitstamp has had $10 million injected into it from venture capitalist/hedge fund firm Pantera. So as a last resort, they could use this money to refund its customers. Bitstamp earns millions of dollars every year from trading fees. The majority of their coins are held in cold storage. Mike Hearn, a trusted Bitcoin dev audited their BTC reserves several months ago and confirmed that everything looked OK. The fact that only 9 percent of all funds were stolen means that the security benefits of separating hot and cold wallets is working. Services like MyBitcoin, inputs.io, and Mt. Gox that failed to properly separate the two have seen the majority of their funds disappear. From the look of this hacking incident, it is clear that Bitstamp is not making the same mistake.

TL:DR; Your deposits are safe. There is no need to worry.

your numbers maybe  wrong ,according to another thread their cold wallet has roughly 130k coins

regardless of what they have in the cold wallet,

5.2 million usd  of uninsured deposits is a lot to cover  and the first suggestion i would have is its an inside job like gox ,mintpal and practically all the others

seems to happens every exchange when they start doing high volume .............(like retirement for life kinda money )

[flipstyle]

I think a lot of you are overly optimistic and downplaying this.

5 million dollars is a huge amount to cover out of pocket unless they were making insane amounts of yearly revenue off fees.

I've seen this play out one too many times in the past.

I hate to think it, but I'm anticipating another 'we're investigating' excuse for a few more weeks or possibly even months while they halt withdrawls and lead customers on.  When in fact it's an inside job and they know damn well they're just buying time.

As stated before, they know everyone will be in a rush to withdraw their funds, and their trade volume will go significantly down as they lose customers. 

TLDR: 

-Current customers panic and want to pull out funds immediately
-Bitstamp issues BS excuses saying their still investigating...keep halting withdrawls for months trying to buy time
-Lose significant trade volume and new customers, resulting in very little fees to pay back any losses
-Issue a 'we're insolvent' message a month or two down the road
-Everyone losses their shit...CEO moves to the bahamas

New exchange launched.  Repeat cycle.

[freedomno1]

I think a lot of you are overly optimistic and downplaying this.

5 million dollars is a huge amount to cover out of pocket unless they were making insane amounts of yearly revenue off fees.

I've seen this play out one too many times in the past.

I hate to think it, but I'm anticipating another 'we're investigating' excuse for a few more weeks or possibly even months while they halt withdrawls and lead customers on.  When in fact it's an inside job and they know damn well they're just buying time.

As stated before, they know everyone will be in a rush to withdraw their funds, and their trade volume will go significantly down as they lose customers. 

TLDR: 

-Current customers panic and want to pull out funds immediately
-Bitstamp issues BS excuses saying their still investigating...keep halting withdrawls for months trying to buy time
-Lose significant trade volume and new customers, resulting in very little fees to pay back any losses
-Issue a 'we're insolvent' message a month or two down the road
-Everyone losses their shit...CEO moves to the bahamas

New exchange launched.  Repeat cycle.

Kind of wonder if its possible to just start a witch hunt early sometimes
Before the dust settles and everything is cleared act first and think later but then again it's probably because I'm getting a tad to cynical about exchange crashes witnessing more than a few myself.
Still hoping everything resolves well though.

[Flashman]

I guess a potential vision of what Bitstamp is like 6 months down the road is vircurex.com  


... diehards and tumbleweeds...


They are supposedly paying back lost funds from fees, but they've done absolutely nothing to promote or improve the place to be an attractive exchange in the now, so there's very little action and very little fees to refund from.

[freedomno1]

I guess a potential vision of what Bitstamp is like 6 months down the road is vircurex.com  


... diehards and tumbleweeds...


They are supposedly paying back lost funds from fees, but they've done absolutely nothing to promote or improve the place to be an attractive exchange in the now, so there's very little action and very little fees to refund from.

Yah vircurex hasn't made a balance payment since August 20th 2014
It's been a good six months
Funny thing about that exchange is that it still advertises interest on deposits when it owes people deposits lol.

[rugrats]

Percentage-wise, this is very similar to the hack that Poloniex suffered in 2014. It lost 12% of its bitcoins due to a technical glitch which was exploited by a hacker. That exchange was able to recover its reserves in just mere months. It has enjoyed a spotless security record since then.

Not quite. Tristan made a 12% (or so) across-the-board deduction of every account with a BTC balance.
Repayments were then made weekly for a few months.
And I seem to remember another hack there involving Counterparty by a Brazilian hotel cleaner, IIRC.

Why did Stamp shut down all fiat withdrawals, if this was just a "bitcoin hack"?    

That is what I would like an answer to. There should be no directly linked reason to the btc hack that involves USD/fiat wires being halted.
Another big red flag.

That's the big question. It's very suspicious that Bitstamp is evading answering it.

It's also a concern that Bitstamp's replies, on Twitter and on their own site, are increasingly vague about when they will be back up.

If they try to bring trading back up while limiting withdrawals, assume they're crooks.

Stamp is mirroring its whole system to a location in San Francisco. I don't know if this is for auditing, a redundancy measure or a prelude to a move from Slovenia.
But it involves the entire system, not just the Bitcoin infrastructure. The process was estimated to take between 24-48 hours.

I hope what is more important is that after the incident at least they know where the loopholes are and have taken the measures to upgrade their security. Also, what I'm interested is how the coins get lost to the attacker? SQL injection, I'm not sure... but certainly it's not that easy to get hacked in the first place.

Stamp initially thought it was a server-related issue, and did not immediately react to the situation. Investigations, with the involvement of local LEAs, are underway.


Interestingly though, the thieves were very generous to miners. In this tx, the fee is 1 BTC.