My funds were in USD. Does that mean I'm safe even if bitcoins were stolen?
That's unlikely though it would greatly depend on the scale of the hack (if there is any)
Approximately a year ago (on August, 2nd, to be precise) Bitfinex got hacked, and over 120,000 bitcoins had been stolen. The exchange socialized the losses among all exchange clients, i.e. the clients' funds were diminished appropriately, and they were given so called redemption tokens covering the loss, which could be traded for dollars and bitcoins. By now all these tokens have already been extinguished, which basically means that Bitfinex paid out their debt in full. On the other hand, when Bter got hacked for over 7,000 bitcoins in February, 2015, only Bitcoin holders were affected at the time. I had doges back then, and I successfully withdrew them all as soon as Bter became operational again in about two weeks after the hack
I personally have in the $100k range on btc-e
. Luckilly I was mostly in fiat when the hack happened, so not missing any coins and think it has a higher chance of being returned than BTC. Although with Aug 1 coming up soon with price expected to rise heavily after, having them reimburse coins would probably be a way better deal.Either way, I'm not sure I'll every see any of it again, and it sucks really bad. I had my coins in cold storage for 4 years, just moved them onto BTC-e this week to sell / try to buy in lower for aug 1. Very, very bad decision.
This is really your fault. Btce has been always a shady exchange. A catastrophe in the making. I do use it because they offer lots of USD withdrawal options and are lax with the rules but if I was selling to hedge my bitcoin value and I don't want to go with the identity verification I'll use bitfinex/kraken/bitmex. The latter is not an exchange but recently their quarterly future is solid enough for 20-40k.