@kiss moon
You're welcome!
It's not only Russia guys. I got friends in Germany, Netherlands and France and they're having the same problems as you guys have mentioned started from early December 2017, but for smaller amounts around 5k - 10k.
I did some more digging and indeed Bitstamp is regulated by Luxembourg Financial Industry Supervisory Commission CSSF. That does not mean you will receive compensation in case they go bankrupt or are hacked, they can decide if they want to do that out of goodwill, they are not obligated to do so. You did the right thing by writing CSSF if Bitstamp does not want to work this out with you. I'm over 90% sure the UK's ombudsman (FOS) cannot help you at all, as I wrote earlier. That leaves you with CSSF, ECC (private/consumer only) and law firms.
I don't think the other two licensed crypto exchanges offer you any compensation insurance as well, hence most professional traders trade on wall street or in the uk as being part of uk's FSCS (50K GBP insurance).
Good luck!
Which exchange, in your opinion, is registered with FSCS? I don't know about any.
There are
no crypto exchanges registered with FSCS, that's the problem. Only top forex brokers located in the UK, but you need to check that to be sure and have it black on white in paper.
I don't think Bistamp is liquid to handle huge amounts of withdrawals and probably not even solvent to do so. That's my opinion based on what has and still is going on and basic math + common sense.
Let's say, in theorem, that Bitstamp or any other crypto exchange has users that have 50% of Bitcoins mined and 50% - 1 are bought for $1. Now the last guy buys the bitcoin for $20k. The market cap of bitcoin rises to supply * last traded price. Let's say, supply of 17 million bitcoins and let's assume Bitstamp had a monopoly where all users will go to buy/sell bitcoin and have their entire account equity (deposits) used.
To use some simple arithmetic:
Bitstamp client deposits: 17m * 0.5 * $1 + 1 * $20k = $8.5 million + $20k = $8,520,000 ($8.52m)
Market cap from: 17m * $1 = $17m, to: 17m * $20k = $340,000,000,000 ($340b)
As you can see, the only way this is sustainable is that more people get in and buy around the same last price to maintain that market cap. Problem is, if price rises too fast vs their earnings from fees + third party capital investments + own equity AND people withdraw huge amounts at the same time(period), crypto exchanges cannot pay you out (i.e. a bank run). Unfortunately, most things rely on a ponzi scheme/pyramid structure in life. The only one who can 100% guarantee it to pay out is the central bank. If they don't have enough fiat, they just print or put more digits in.
Things will really go south when theft occurred (i.e. a hack). Not implying this has happened, just having an open mind and mature discussion here.
As the top forex brokers offering you an insurance in case things go wrong, I don't think they will for cryptos if this continues without new big money coming in, while people cashing out. Therefore, there are only 3 crypto money licensed transmitter exchanges, where there could have been many more crypto fiat exchanges, ask yourself why this didn't happen. I know coinbase and kraken have huge reserves and bistamp had a lot of liquidity as well in the past, that's why everything went so smooth for years. But, when suddenly withdrawals and deposits don't go smooth and it's still not solved within a week, I'm worried and that's my argument. The same thing happens in the business world, hence the stalling of time.