Quote from: miner49er on October 20, 2013, 07:48:13 PM

Of course, we do not know the extent of the damage to 50BTC.com; maybe it is a catastrophic loss and they cannot recover. nothing to compare because we do not know how great the loss was.

Also, I cannot imagine that they did not have any kind of reserve or small hotwallet balance to prevent a major withdrawal of invalid amounts like this. That just makes no sense. and to not respond at all or post any updates about it to reassure the members? even if they just post that they had lost their reserve before they could stop the processes?

I've mentioned in #btcguild this morning. Any responsible pool, especially a large one (50BTC was the largest for quite a long period), should have 3 things:

1) Hot wallet that doesn't exceed expected daily withdrawal volume (+ 10% or so during price rallies since withdrawals normally exceed newly minted coins during a rally).
2) Cold wallet
3) A buffer of coins that is larger than the hot wallet balance

That setup means the pool always has enough funds to cover any loss. Yes, it comes from the pool owner's pocket. BECAUSE IT SHOULD! The pool owner is the one responsible for securing their pool, the miner's have no way to know how secure/insecure a pool is until it is too late. But there should always bee a buffer in place that means in the event of a hack (which empties the entire hot wallet), the pool can be fixed/secured again, and the loss is taken from that buffer. The owner doesn't have to purchase coins to make up the difference, they just have to hold off on selling coins until the buffer is replenished.

Quote from: arklan on October 20, 2013, 08:04:51 PM

For now, ozcoin, but my 15ghash is so low these days that anything but pps kinda screws me. I'll look at btc guild later I suppose, i just worry about them having to much hash.

BTC Guild is only ~25-27% of the network ever since ghash.io claimed a 20-25% piece of the network hashrate.