9 ms·

Bitstamp Accounts Frozen

190 points by TwoFactor 12y ago

All customers should have received the following email. For some reason its not posted on their website. ----- Dear customer, Today our transaction processing server detected problems with our hot wallet and stopped processing withdrawals. You should STOP SENDING bitcoin deposits to your Bitstamp account IMMEDIATELY as private keys of your deposit address may be lost. Your bitcoins already deposited with us are stored in a cold wallet and can not be affected. We will send you more info as soon as possible. Best regards, Bitstamp team

sidko 12y ago
Here's a verification with the mail headers: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2rdbgf/bitstamp_hot_wallet_problems_mail_with_full/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2rdbgf/bitstamp_hot... Also, couple of more Reddit threads with an ongoing discussion around this: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2rd6bb/problems_with_bitstamp_withdraws/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2rd6bb/problems_wit... http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2rd2xe/bitstamp_is_apparently_broken_or_hacked_i_suggest/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2rd2xe/bitstamp_is_...
qnr 12y ago
More info: https://coinfire.cf/2015/01/05/bitstamp-confirms-deposit-address-issue/ https://coinfire.cf/2015/01/05/bitstamp-confirms-deposit-add... "We are working to determine what has gone wrong. The majority of our coins are swept and placed in cold storage often so this shouldn’t be a major issue right now but we are still working to determine the breadth of the issue. This seems to be a server issue and not a compromise but our teams are still investigating."
- megaultra 12y ago
  I don't like the wording here: The majority of our coins are swept and placed in cold storage often so this shouldn't be a major issue right now. It leaves too much wiggle room. It's like saying: At least some coins have not been placed in cold storage so this could be an issue. Does not look good.
  - corford 12y ago
    To be fair, they have to leave some wiggle room while they investigate the extent of the hack. With a bit of luck just the hot wallet got compromised, they trace how, fix it and honour any deposits made to the that wallet before the breach was detected. So far this is exactly what they say they are going to do. Time will tell but there's no reason to believe they wont act correctly at this stage.
    - corford 12y ago
      On the other hand, this makes for uncomfortable reading (was posted to r/bitcoin earlier today): http://pastebin.com/ufNLW7xZ http://pastebin.com/ufNLW7xZ
  - Robin_Message 12y ago
    The whole point of cold storage is that only some coins are swept into it (and some remain in a "hot" wallet which is used to process transactions) so I don't think you can read what you have into this statement.
  - unreal37 12y ago
    Unless their hot wallet was always empty (and how could it be, since it's by definition used for operations), there is no way they can say all of their coins are safe and none are missing. It's all they can say unless they know 100% for sure what was taken and what is safe.
Animats 12y ago
This is strange. There's still nothing about this on their web site. It's very suspicious when a Bitcoin exchange claims problems on the deposit side and stops processing withdrawals. Nobody trusts a Bitcoin exchange in trouble, with good reason given the history. On the other hand, it's 6:30 AM in London, where Bitstamp is, and their staff is probably not in yet. Bitstamp is still processing trades; they haven't shut down their trading engine. Most merchants who accept Bitcoin do so through Coinbase, which sells on Bitstamp. Coinbase only holds a working float of Bitcoins. When Coinbase can't unload incoming Bitcoins, they start refusing transactions. So most Bitcoin e-commerce will stop within hours if this isn't fixed rapidly. On top of that, Bitcoin, after being stable around $315-$320 or so for weeks, suddenly dropped to a low of $255 in the last 48 hours. Right now, it's around $270. Something is going on.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  If their hot wallet is out of commission, they have nowhere to send withdrawals from, so it makes sense from that angle. They're definitely communicating poorly, though.
- grovulent 12y ago
  This is obviously bad - and certainly suspicious... but the lack of withdrawals given the situation is just sensible. Withdrawals will require movement from cold storage - am I right? Well - if you've got a security problem with your hot wallet, then this would be a ridiculously stupid thing to enable.
- FatalLogic 12y ago
  Most merchants who accept Bitcoin do so through Coinbase, which sells on Bitstamp. Coinbase only holds a working float of Bitcoins. When Coinbase can't unload incoming Bitcoins, they start refusing transactions. So most Bitcoin e-commerce will stop within hours if this isn't fixed rapidly. Most? Source? Bitpay seems to be bigger than Coinbase And wouldn't Coinbase just sell somewhere else, instead of shutting down their entire business? Your claim that most Bitcoin e-commerce will stop within hours seems implausible
jasonjei 12y ago
Until there is a bank that can credibly hold onto BitCoin deposits, these sorts of things are going to hinder further the viability and credibility of BitCoin as a mechanism of transaction (Mt Gox seems to have done a ton of damage). As of right now, it seems it's very hard for BTC to be stored safely at a stable price, and keeping your money in a world currency seems like a better investment, for now. I know my sentiments are going to be unpopular with some BTC champions, but as an observer with no BTC, I am wary of using BTC. Just my .02 BTC.
- moe 12y ago
  Since you appear to be struggling with the basic concept of bitcoin, here's the first phrase from Bitcoin.org for you: Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks
  - bdcravens 12y ago
    Most Bitcoin users struggle with the basic concept of Bitcoin then. While you can "be your own bank", most coins (no reference, just surmising) are in exchanges rather than wallets owned by the end user. So despite the marketing copy, there's a ton of Bitcoin stored in what are essentially "banks".
    - freework 12y ago
      Can be your own bank, not "is and always be completely devoid of any kind of banking institute" America is a free country, but not everyone in America is free (some are in prison, for instance).
      - bdcravens 12y ago
        Absolutely. I was addressing the idea that Bitcoin is automatically decentralized, which is very much untrue for a significant number (though perhaps I was incorrect in saying "most" - I don't have those numbers, but neither does anyone else it would seem)
    - 12y ago
imperialdrive 12y ago
https://www.irccloud.com/pastebin/1cvm62al https://www.irccloud.com/pastebin/1cvm62al this is all I could find from Twitter search: does the timing match up at all? 11:48 AM <jecar> protip 11:48 AM <jecar> and exchange is getting hacked now 11:48 AM <jecar> GOXXED 11:49 AM <jecar> an exchange 11:49 AM <heaven> what 11:49 AM <jecar> guess which one im goxxing 11:49 AM <jecar> thats why prices are falling 11:49 AM → dzan joined ⇐ mpm quit 11:50 AM <Fate> you sound like shovel 11:50 AM <Fate> hi shovel
- miander 12y ago
  Always really important not to jump to conclusions on these things, but I can't help but be curious to know what time zone these time stamps are in. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any way to find out. The http headers for that page also simply report the current time.
grondilu 12y ago
I am a long bitstamp customer and I have not received such email.
- johnpowell 12y ago
  Do you consider that a good or bad thing?
- im3w1l 12y ago
  seconded
- grondilu 12y ago
  Just checked my email again, and indeed I have received it now.
  - im3w1l 12y ago
    Got it now too (about 2.5 hours after grondilus post). I wonder why it is happening so slowly... Are they mailing us manually?
    - debacle 12y ago
      They are probably using the same queue that they use to send other email, which is likely rate limited.
    - eli 12y ago
      If you suddenly start sending a much larger volume of mail, it can get flagged as spam.
davidgerard 12y ago
What an amazing coincidence they got hacked the day after a price crash! I wonder how this could keep happening.
- danieltillett 12y ago
  Yes it is. It is almost as though someone might have a vested interest in announcing a problem at exactly this point in time.
  - davidgerard 12y ago
    Almost only, of course - I'm sure everyone at Bitstamp, and indeed every Bitcoin exchange, is of unimpeachable integrity, and it's just capricious Fortuna toying with their hot wallets.
    - danieltillett 12y ago
      You might think this, but I could not possibly comment :)
      - davidgerard 12y ago
        To be fair, conventional banks say "Yes, Mr. Smith, I'm sorry but it seems we misplaced all your money irretrievably. Sorry. It's gone. Forever. No, I'm sorry, but we aren't liable. Have a great day!" all the time. NO WAIT, THEY DON'T DO ANYTHING OF THE SORT.
        danieltillett 12y ago
        Banks used to do this sort of thing before the FDIC was established, but as you rightly point out the level of professionalism is somewhat lacking in these outfits.
yc1010 12y ago
I think the title of this thread should be edited since its highly misleading and first thing people thing is their bank account was closed which would be a huge kick in balls to bitcoin. edit: quite possibly this is a false rumor being spread by malicious party to sink bitcoin for their profit, now the title and the tone makes sense to me, as well as lack of any news about this from bitstamp edit2: checked r/Bitcoin seems convincingly legit but still nothing official from bitstamp, might be good idea for people to use better exchanges like Kraken anyways, those guys are cool
davidgerard 12y ago
Needless to say, /r/buttcoin has run out of popcorn. So it's had to move to altcorns.
corford 12y ago
Hopefully most people learned from the MTGox fiasco and weren't keeping all of their coins on a Bitstamp provided deposit wallet (not that there's any indication at this stage that the bulk of bitstamp's deposits are under threat but, you know, better to be safe than sorry...)
FatalLogic 12y ago
https://Bitstamp.net https://Bitstamp.net is now showing this message Bitstamp Service Temporarily Suspended We have reason to believe that one of Bitstamp’s operational wallets was compromised on January 4th, 2015. As a security precaution against compromises Bitstamp only maintains a small fraction of customer bitcoins in online systems. Bitstamp maintains more than enough offline reserves to cover the compromised bitcoins. IN THE MEANTIME, PLEASE DO NOT MAKE DEPOSITS TO PREVIOUSLY ISSUED BITCOIN DEPOSIT ADDRESSES. THEY CANNOT BE HONORED! Customer deposits made prior to January 5th, 2015 9:00 UTC are fully covered by Bitstamp’s reserves. Deposits made to newly issued addresses provided after January 5th, 2015 9:00 UTC can be honored. Bitstamp takes our security and soundness very seriously. In an excess of caution, we are suspending service as we continue to investigate. We will return to service and amend our security measures as appropriate. Bitstamp Team
- sneak 12y ago
  Two additional updates from their CEO: https://twitter.com/nejc_kodric/status/552091195795845120 https://twitter.com/nejc_kodric/status/552091195795845120 https://twitter.com/nejc_kodric/status/552090819659071488 https://twitter.com/nejc_kodric/status/552090819659071488
- tlrobinson 12y ago
  "IN THE MEANTIME, PLEASE DO NOT MAKE DEPOSITS TO PREVIOUSLY ISSUED BITCOIN DEPOSIT ADDRESSES. THEY CANNOT BE HONORED!" Shouldn't deposits go directly to cold storage addresses for exactly this reason, and in case someone makes a large deposit that exceeds their desired hot/cold wallet ratio?
  - sp332 12y ago
    Each user needs their own deposit address, for bookkeeping. If the cold storage is really offline, you'd have to manually create a new address for each new user.
    - tlrobinson 12y ago
      "Hierarchical deterministic wallets" (BIP0032) support parallel generation of public and private keys on different systems. The bookkeeping system can generate an unlimited number of addresses from the public "seed" that corresponds to the private keys that will eventually be generated using the private key seed stored in the cold wallet. However, I didn't consider that the hot wallet needs to be replenished as people withdrawal, which would require a steady flow of bitcoins from cold to hot storage. I think it would make sense to have a "warm" wallet for all deposits, then immediately send deposits to hot or cold wallets depending on withdrawal demand.
abrkn 12y ago
> You should STOP SENDING bitcoin deposits to your Bitstamp account IMMEDIATELY as private keys of your deposit address may be lost. I read this as wallet file(s) having been corrupted. The way to avoid this is to use deterministic[1] wallets However... > We have reason to believe that one of Bitstamp’s operational wallets was compromised on January 4th, 2015. makes it sound like one would be wise to short sell btc immediately. [1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawiki https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawi...
bkolobara 12y ago
I was also not able to log in for few hours to kraken.com. I would be just informed to try later. I never saw a notification about it. And of course I was not able to cancel my order while the price was dropping. Every time I try to touch bitcoin I lose money before I even buy them. And when the price starts dropping all the exchanges become a bit shady.
Animats 12y ago
Bitstamp needs a crisis PR team right now. They're blowing it. They've announced "we're down, we don't know what happened, we don't know when we will be back up, but everybody's assets are just fine. Trust us." That's not how you do crisis PR. In this situation, a company has to overcommunicate. Their CEO should have called a press conference for noon in London. All the financial press would show up. They should be announcing "We've been attacked. All customer funds should be intact, but we're shutting down temporarily for a snap audit. We've brought in outside auditors. We've notified the Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard). Here are their representatives and you can question them. We will have another press conference in 24 hours". Now people will be asking hard questions, such as "Is Bitstamp really in London or are they really in Slovenia", and "Why is the CEO on a plane for Vegas?" (Going to CES, yes, but in this situation, he needs to get back to the office.)
- sneak 12y ago
  Considering that you just figured out very nearly exactly what's happening (sans press conferences) - how exactly are they blowing it? PS: There is no current Concorde service.
  - pseudoscops 12y ago
    Boy am I glad I moved all my crypto holdings from Bitstamp to a decentralized exchange (http://www.bitshares.org http://www.bitshares.org) Feels a lot safer having it all in there!
kordless 12y ago
Looks like there were transfers out of the hot wallet addresses starting yesterday morning sometime. $6M US: http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/2rd8h8/daily_discussion_monday_january_05_2015/cnf0h9p http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/2rd8h8/daily...
esoteric1 12y ago
Well, ever since I lost my bitcoins on gox I don't let anything on exchanges. This because if you let your coins on an exchange they are not yours, if the exchange closes you can loose everything. What I've been using recently is the BitShares decentralized exchange. I can save my assets there and everything seems to run smoothly up until now. It seems to be a nice solution, you can still trade and don't need to worry about exchanges going down. Not to mention their market pegged assets have prevented me from loosing some money on this last price drop. If you would like to try it, here is a link http://bitshares.org/ http://bitshares.org/ it's still something new but definitely worth checking out, it solves most problems with crypto, which is trusting exchanges and volatility

190 points by TwoFactor 12y ago

sidko 12y ago

Here's a verification with the mail headers: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2rdbgf/bitstamp_hot_wallet_problems_mail_with_full/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2rdbgf/bitstamp_hot... Also, couple of more Reddit threads with an ongoing discussion around this: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2rd6bb/problems_with_bitstamp_withdraws/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2rd6bb/problems_wit... http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2rd2xe/bitstamp_is_apparently_broken_or_hacked_i_suggest/ http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2rd2xe/bitstamp_is_...

qnr 12y ago

More info: https://coinfire.cf/2015/01/05/bitstamp-confirms-deposit-address-issue/ https://coinfire.cf/2015/01/05/bitstamp-confirms-deposit-add... "We are working to determine what has gone wrong. The majority of our coins are swept and placed in cold storage often so this shouldn’t be a major issue right now but we are still working to determine the breadth of the issue. This seems to be a server issue and not a compromise but our teams are still investigating."

megaultra 12y ago
I don't like the wording here: The majority of our coins are swept and placed in cold storage often so this shouldn't be a major issue right now. It leaves too much wiggle room. It's like saying: At least some coins have not been placed in cold storage so this could be an issue. Does not look good.
- corford 12y ago
  To be fair, they have to leave some wiggle room while they investigate the extent of the hack. With a bit of luck just the hot wallet got compromised, they trace how, fix it and honour any deposits made to the that wallet before the breach was detected. So far this is exactly what they say they are going to do. Time will tell but there's no reason to believe they wont act correctly at this stage.
  - corford 12y ago
    On the other hand, this makes for uncomfortable reading (was posted to r/bitcoin earlier today): http://pastebin.com/ufNLW7xZ http://pastebin.com/ufNLW7xZ
- Robin_Message 12y ago
  The whole point of cold storage is that only some coins are swept into it (and some remain in a "hot" wallet which is used to process transactions) so I don't think you can read what you have into this statement.
- unreal37 12y ago
  Unless their hot wallet was always empty (and how could it be, since it's by definition used for operations), there is no way they can say all of their coins are safe and none are missing. It's all they can say unless they know 100% for sure what was taken and what is safe.

Animats 12y ago

This is strange. There's still nothing about this on their web site. It's very suspicious when a Bitcoin exchange claims problems on the deposit side and stops processing withdrawals. Nobody trusts a Bitcoin exchange in trouble, with good reason given the history. On the other hand, it's 6:30 AM in London, where Bitstamp is, and their staff is probably not in yet. Bitstamp is still processing trades; they haven't shut down their trading engine. Most merchants who accept Bitcoin do so through Coinbase, which sells on Bitstamp. Coinbase only holds a working float of Bitcoins. When Coinbase can't unload incoming Bitcoins, they start refusing transactions. So most Bitcoin e-commerce will stop within hours if this isn't fixed rapidly. On top of that, Bitcoin, after being stable around $315-$320 or so for weeks, suddenly dropped to a low of $255 in the last 48 hours. Right now, it's around $270. Something is going on.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
waterlesscloud 12y ago
If their hot wallet is out of commission, they have nowhere to send withdrawals from, so it makes sense from that angle. They're definitely communicating poorly, though.
grovulent 12y ago
This is obviously bad - and certainly suspicious... but the lack of withdrawals given the situation is just sensible. Withdrawals will require movement from cold storage - am I right? Well - if you've got a security problem with your hot wallet, then this would be a ridiculously stupid thing to enable.
FatalLogic 12y ago
Most merchants who accept Bitcoin do so through Coinbase, which sells on Bitstamp. Coinbase only holds a working float of Bitcoins. When Coinbase can't unload incoming Bitcoins, they start refusing transactions. So most Bitcoin e-commerce will stop within hours if this isn't fixed rapidly. Most? Source? Bitpay seems to be bigger than Coinbase And wouldn't Coinbase just sell somewhere else, instead of shutting down their entire business? Your claim that most Bitcoin e-commerce will stop within hours seems implausible

jasonjei 12y ago

Until there is a bank that can credibly hold onto BitCoin deposits, these sorts of things are going to hinder further the viability and credibility of BitCoin as a mechanism of transaction (Mt Gox seems to have done a ton of damage). As of right now, it seems it's very hard for BTC to be stored safely at a stable price, and keeping your money in a world currency seems like a better investment, for now. I know my sentiments are going to be unpopular with some BTC champions, but as an observer with no BTC, I am wary of using BTC. Just my .02 BTC.

moe 12y ago
Since you appear to be struggling with the basic concept of bitcoin, here's the first phrase from Bitcoin.org for you: Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority or banks
- bdcravens 12y ago
  Most Bitcoin users struggle with the basic concept of Bitcoin then. While you can "be your own bank", most coins (no reference, just surmising) are in exchanges rather than wallets owned by the end user. So despite the marketing copy, there's a ton of Bitcoin stored in what are essentially "banks".
  - freework 12y ago
    Can be your own bank, not "is and always be completely devoid of any kind of banking institute" America is a free country, but not everyone in America is free (some are in prison, for instance).
    - bdcravens 12y ago
      Absolutely. I was addressing the idea that Bitcoin is automatically decentralized, which is very much untrue for a significant number (though perhaps I was incorrect in saying "most" - I don't have those numbers, but neither does anyone else it would seem)
  - 12y ago

imperialdrive 12y ago

https://www.irccloud.com/pastebin/1cvm62al https://www.irccloud.com/pastebin/1cvm62al this is all I could find from Twitter search: does the timing match up at all? 11:48 AM <jecar> protip 11:48 AM <jecar> and exchange is getting hacked now 11:48 AM <jecar> GOXXED 11:49 AM <jecar> an exchange 11:49 AM <heaven> what 11:49 AM <jecar> guess which one im goxxing 11:49 AM <jecar> thats why prices are falling 11:49 AM → dzan joined ⇐ mpm quit 11:50 AM <Fate> you sound like shovel 11:50 AM <Fate> hi shovel

miander 12y ago
Always really important not to jump to conclusions on these things, but I can't help but be curious to know what time zone these time stamps are in. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be any way to find out. The http headers for that page also simply report the current time.

grondilu 12y ago

I am a long bitstamp customer and I have not received such email.

johnpowell 12y ago
Do you consider that a good or bad thing?
im3w1l 12y ago
seconded
grondilu 12y ago
Just checked my email again, and indeed I have received it now.
- im3w1l 12y ago
  Got it now too (about 2.5 hours after grondilus post). I wonder why it is happening so slowly... Are they mailing us manually?
  - debacle 12y ago
    They are probably using the same queue that they use to send other email, which is likely rate limited.
  - eli 12y ago
    If you suddenly start sending a much larger volume of mail, it can get flagged as spam.

davidgerard 12y ago

What an amazing coincidence they got hacked the day after a price crash! I wonder how this could keep happening.

danieltillett 12y ago
Yes it is. It is almost as though someone might have a vested interest in announcing a problem at exactly this point in time.
- davidgerard 12y ago
  Almost only, of course - I'm sure everyone at Bitstamp, and indeed every Bitcoin exchange, is of unimpeachable integrity, and it's just capricious Fortuna toying with their hot wallets.
  - danieltillett 12y ago
    You might think this, but I could not possibly comment :)
    - davidgerard 12y ago
      To be fair, conventional banks say "Yes, Mr. Smith, I'm sorry but it seems we misplaced all your money irretrievably. Sorry. It's gone. Forever. No, I'm sorry, but we aren't liable. Have a great day!" all the time. NO WAIT, THEY DON'T DO ANYTHING OF THE SORT.
      - danieltillett 12y ago
        Banks used to do this sort of thing before the FDIC was established, but as you rightly point out the level of professionalism is somewhat lacking in these outfits.

yc1010 12y ago

I think the title of this thread should be edited since its highly misleading and first thing people thing is their bank account was closed which would be a huge kick in balls to bitcoin. edit: quite possibly this is a false rumor being spread by malicious party to sink bitcoin for their profit, now the title and the tone makes sense to me, as well as lack of any news about this from bitstamp edit2: checked r/Bitcoin seems convincingly legit but still nothing official from bitstamp, might be good idea for people to use better exchanges like Kraken anyways, those guys are cool

davidgerard 12y ago

Needless to say, /r/buttcoin has run out of popcorn. So it's had to move to altcorns.

corford 12y ago

Hopefully most people learned from the MTGox fiasco and weren't keeping all of their coins on a Bitstamp provided deposit wallet (not that there's any indication at this stage that the bulk of bitstamp's deposits are under threat but, you know, better to be safe than sorry...)

FatalLogic 12y ago

https://Bitstamp.net https://Bitstamp.net is now showing this message Bitstamp Service Temporarily Suspended We have reason to believe that one of Bitstamp’s operational wallets was compromised on January 4th, 2015. As a security precaution against compromises Bitstamp only maintains a small fraction of customer bitcoins in online systems. Bitstamp maintains more than enough offline reserves to cover the compromised bitcoins. IN THE MEANTIME, PLEASE DO NOT MAKE DEPOSITS TO PREVIOUSLY ISSUED BITCOIN DEPOSIT ADDRESSES. THEY CANNOT BE HONORED! Customer deposits made prior to January 5th, 2015 9:00 UTC are fully covered by Bitstamp’s reserves. Deposits made to newly issued addresses provided after January 5th, 2015 9:00 UTC can be honored. Bitstamp takes our security and soundness very seriously. In an excess of caution, we are suspending service as we continue to investigate. We will return to service and amend our security measures as appropriate. Bitstamp Team

sneak 12y ago
Two additional updates from their CEO: https://twitter.com/nejc_kodric/status/552091195795845120 https://twitter.com/nejc_kodric/status/552091195795845120 https://twitter.com/nejc_kodric/status/552090819659071488 https://twitter.com/nejc_kodric/status/552090819659071488
tlrobinson 12y ago
"IN THE MEANTIME, PLEASE DO NOT MAKE DEPOSITS TO PREVIOUSLY ISSUED BITCOIN DEPOSIT ADDRESSES. THEY CANNOT BE HONORED!" Shouldn't deposits go directly to cold storage addresses for exactly this reason, and in case someone makes a large deposit that exceeds their desired hot/cold wallet ratio?
- sp332 12y ago
  Each user needs their own deposit address, for bookkeeping. If the cold storage is really offline, you'd have to manually create a new address for each new user.
  - tlrobinson 12y ago
    "Hierarchical deterministic wallets" (BIP0032) support parallel generation of public and private keys on different systems. The bookkeeping system can generate an unlimited number of addresses from the public "seed" that corresponds to the private keys that will eventually be generated using the private key seed stored in the cold wallet. However, I didn't consider that the hot wallet needs to be replenished as people withdrawal, which would require a steady flow of bitcoins from cold to hot storage. I think it would make sense to have a "warm" wallet for all deposits, then immediately send deposits to hot or cold wallets depending on withdrawal demand.

abrkn 12y ago

> You should STOP SENDING bitcoin deposits to your Bitstamp account IMMEDIATELY as private keys of your deposit address may be lost. I read this as wallet file(s) having been corrupted. The way to avoid this is to use deterministic[1] wallets However... > We have reason to believe that one of Bitstamp’s operational wallets was compromised on January 4th, 2015. makes it sound like one would be wise to short sell btc immediately. [1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawiki https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0032.mediawi...

bkolobara 12y ago

I was also not able to log in for few hours to kraken.com. I would be just informed to try later. I never saw a notification about it. And of course I was not able to cancel my order while the price was dropping. Every time I try to touch bitcoin I lose money before I even buy them. And when the price starts dropping all the exchanges become a bit shady.

Animats 12y ago

Bitstamp needs a crisis PR team right now. They're blowing it. They've announced "we're down, we don't know what happened, we don't know when we will be back up, but everybody's assets are just fine. Trust us." That's not how you do crisis PR. In this situation, a company has to overcommunicate. Their CEO should have called a press conference for noon in London. All the financial press would show up. They should be announcing "We've been attacked. All customer funds should be intact, but we're shutting down temporarily for a snap audit. We've brought in outside auditors. We've notified the Metropolitan Police (Scotland Yard). Here are their representatives and you can question them. We will have another press conference in 24 hours". Now people will be asking hard questions, such as "Is Bitstamp really in London or are they really in Slovenia", and "Why is the CEO on a plane for Vegas?" (Going to CES, yes, but in this situation, he needs to get back to the office.)

sneak 12y ago
Considering that you just figured out very nearly exactly what's happening (sans press conferences) - how exactly are they blowing it? PS: There is no current Concorde service.
- pseudoscops 12y ago
  Boy am I glad I moved all my crypto holdings from Bitstamp to a decentralized exchange (http://www.bitshares.org http://www.bitshares.org) Feels a lot safer having it all in there!

kordless 12y ago

Looks like there were transfers out of the hot wallet addresses starting yesterday morning sometime. $6M US: http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/2rd8h8/daily_discussion_monday_january_05_2015/cnf0h9p http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/2rd8h8/daily...

esoteric1 12y ago

Well, ever since I lost my bitcoins on gox I don't let anything on exchanges. This because if you let your coins on an exchange they are not yours, if the exchange closes you can loose everything. What I've been using recently is the BitShares decentralized exchange. I can save my assets there and everything seems to run smoothly up until now. It seems to be a nice solution, you can still trade and don't need to worry about exchanges going down. Not to mention their market pegged assets have prevented me from loosing some money on this last price drop. If you would like to try it, here is a link http://bitshares.org/ http://bitshares.org/ it's still something new but definitely worth checking out, it solves most problems with crypto, which is trusting exchanges and volatility