Post
Topic
Board Speculation
Re: bitstamp 18,000 bitcoins stolen? -confirmed
by
r0d3r1ck
on 06/01/2015, 15:51:55 UTC
i suppose i had a lucky escape, i never saw reason to keep coins in the bitstamp exchange. i traded out of my bitstamp iou's on rippletrade when the prices went out of sync. i had to take a poor ask price in ripples but at least i got my money. the bitstamp gateway was open long after the initial announcement, and i thought i was being a little paranoid by bailing out with a haircut of about 2%.

now my ~bitstamp iou balance is nil, i had some dust in there. will be interesting to see if it comes back. anyone else see this?

Bitstamp has 200,000 BTC in reserves. Unlike Gox, they only lost a small percentage of total bitcoins during this hack so I think customers' deposits are safe. Poloniex suffered a similar hack which saw them lose 12.3 percent of their total BTC. They made it out fine.

Smells like fractional reserves...


yes, i agree. it is similar. now, a hacker cannot steal a digital iou, as they could only redeem it from the issuer who would recognise it as stolen and not accept it. the often cited weakness in ripple iou's has benefit in this case.