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Bitstamp Accounts Frozen

news.ycombinator.com

41–50 of 112 posts

Re: Bitstamp Accounts Frozen

#42
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that most people are never going to adopt Bitcoin if they have to worry about the technical side of securing their own funds. And given that there are many examples of incompetence and/or fraud within exchanges and other nascent businesses that intend to handle elements of that security on behalf of customers, and no enforced regulations such as you find in the traditional banking sector, you can imagine…

The point is that most people are never going to adopt Bitcoin if they have to worry about the technical side of securing their own funds And most people are never going to buy physical gold because they have to worry about the technical side of securing their own funds. Know what? Bitcoin/Gold is not for these people respectively, and nobody ever claimed otherwise.

>and nobody ever claimed otherwise.

except lots and lots of bitcoin advocates.

Re: Bitstamp Accounts Frozen

#43
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitstamp has a blog, a web site, a Facebook page, and a Twitter feed. None of these have any mention of problems. There's a report on Reddit that withdrawals stopped 16 hours ago: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2rayix/bitstamp_bit... Yet no official comments from Bitstamp. Just a strange email, possibly forged. That's a very bad sign. "It is indeed strange...and strangely familiar." Right. This is a pattern…

When logged in on the balance page it says: "DO NOT DEPOSIT TO PREVIOUSLY PROVIDED BITCOIN DEPOSIT ADDRESSES. Deposits sent to previous address will not be honored. New deposit addresses are forthcoming.".

::sigh:: This is one of the reasons that Bitcoin core discourages address reuse.

Re: Bitstamp Accounts Frozen

#44
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that most people are never going to adopt Bitcoin if they have to worry about the technical side of securing their own funds And most people are never going to buy physical gold because they have to worry about the technical side of securing their own funds. Know what? Bitcoin/Gold is not for these people respectively, and nobody ever claimed otherwise.

> Know what? Bitcoin/Gold is not for these people respectively, and nobody ever claimed otherwise. Well, I can assure you that in threads and forums other than this one that plenty of people have claimed Bitcoin is destined to replace traditional currencies worldwide. Though I do recognize that you made no such assertion here. > And most people are never going to buy physical gold because they have to worry about the…

> I can assure you that in threads and forums other than this one that plenty of people have claimed Bitcoin is destined to replace traditional currencies worldwide

At the risk of pissing off numerous Bitcoin fanboys, I think Ripple has a greater chance of world domination than Bitcoin, despite their different purposes/design. Any currency that isn't linked to a power base, IMHO, has little chance for world domination. Then again, what do I know... IANAE (economist :).

Re: Bitstamp Accounts Frozen

#45
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most coins (no reference, just surmising) are in exchanges rather than wallets owned by the end user. Wrong. And this is why these Bitcoin debates are so annoying and repetitive. For some reason everyone feels entitled to their little doomsday speech without bothering to research even their most basic premises.

There's a difference between making an educated guess and "have no clue what you are talking about". I first mined in 2011, and have purchased through numerous exchanges since then. An increasing number of users aren't geeks who give a damn about crypto: they want to get into Bitcoin with the easiest on-ramp. edit: Did you totally change your reply? From the time I started my comment to hitting submit, your comment c…

[deleted]

Re: Bitstamp Accounts Frozen

#46
post #37
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crash was 12 hrs before anything happened at Bitstamp.

12 hrs before __you__ knew anything happened at Bitstamp.

The smart money always leaves before the price goes down.

The dumb money always leaves after the prices has gone down.

If you don't know who the dumb one is, it is you.

Re: Bitstamp Accounts Frozen

#47
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between making an educated guess and "have no clue what you are talking about". I first mined in 2011, and have purchased through numerous exchanges since then. An increasing number of users aren't geeks who give a damn about crypto: they want to get into Bitcoin with the easiest on-ramp. edit: Did you totally change your reply? From the time I started my comment to hitting submit, your comment c…

There's a difference between making an educated guess and "have no clue what you are talking about" ... See the comment by qnr.

If you're going to keep changing your comments, please mark them with "edit".

I don't have the numbers, but guess what, you don't either. I'm going on mostly anecdotal evidence: Bitpay's growth, Circle's growth, Coinbase's growth, etc. I may be wrong about "most", but in the face of hard numbers (which many companies like Coinbase don't provide), how could any observation of the community not lean towards a conclusion of increasing centralization?

Re: Bitstamp Accounts Frozen

#48
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

Re: Bitstamp Accounts Frozen

#49
post #6

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 sent…

I think a tweet from a few years ago sums up the situation (at least in terms of "conventional wisdom"):

   You know what’s cooler than a million dollars?
   Virtual currency backed by nothing and nobody.
   @ReformedBroker
The only reason BitCoin exists is because of all the problems with existing currencies and payment mechanisms. It solves a lot of those problems, but creates new problems of its own.

Re: Bitstamp Accounts Frozen

#50
post #30
post #4

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 sh…

Bitcoin exchanges actually can't stop people from sending them new Bitcoin deposits because the Bitcoin protocol doesn't provide any way to block new transactions to their existing deposit addresses. About the best they can do is to send out an e-mail like this one.

Even worse, some people used to (don't know if many still do) set up a payout address on whatever mining pool they're using directly to an address on an exchange. Ouch.
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