This would be happening if you moved the server to a different timezone.

Definitely seems like someone is messing around. Seems like a good sign that it goes up and down, but still shows the same page when it's up.

That's the other thing. If you associate with criminals who launder millions of dollars and hold money for them and you also value your life, exit scamming when people know how to find you is very stupid. Criminals with resources don't have to worry about international treaties, extradition, due process, or even evidence. They should be more worried about that than the authorities with their fines and penalties really. A ripped of mobster will kill your family and make you watch before they kill you.

Couple things you're not taking into account here.

A large amount of their money has always been collected in crypto. They likely had millions of $ of crytpo 5 years ago, which means they likely have billions worth now.

You are assuming that all their money is made through fee's, and although that is a very nice amount of money, I'm sure they were doing their own trading as well and probably making at least as much off of that as they were making in fees.

They might be saying very little about the situation for the same reason you should shut up if the cops ever start investigating you. Anything you say can and will be used against you. Maybe they're just a little smarter than you think they are.

People would be wary at first and would take most of their money out, but they just need to stay around, and people would come back in even greater numbers, guaranteed.

Again, I'm just being pragmatic. I'm not counting on getting my money back. I would be cool though.

I have no idea what's going to happen. I did loose some money there (probably), but not most of it, cause I spread it out. I'm just speculating.

I never said they have a moral problem with an exit scam. It's in their own self interests to find a way to weather the storm. Remember they may have some links to illegal money, but they aren't ponzy scheming. They earn legitimate fees from people trading. People with BTC-e type of funding tend to be a bit better at hiring the right people to navigate legal land better than two bit criminals with 30 day scam websites.

The more that dark web drug markets are taken down the more they keep popping up. I don't think they would have any trouble selling it. A lot of people are willing to risk a lot more for a lot less than the amount of money that the owner of BTC-e will make if it comes back up and running again. People will stuff their butts full of heroin for a few thousand dollars and risk dying. You think there's no one brave enough to give this a shot? I just think there's plenty of reasons for it to come back. Maybe it won't, but to think no one is willing to take the risk if they can figure out a way, is pretty simple minded.

BTC-e is a huge money maker for whoever is brave enough to run it. As long as the site isn't taken over by authorities, there's a huge incentive to come back. If they do come back they will recover public trust very quickly and more than ever before. If the original owners want to get out they can sell it to someone else. Guaranteed, they know plenty of people ready and willing to run the site and and make millions.

Whatever amount of money is stored on BTC-e right now that they could steal is NOTHING compared to the profit they've made in the past six years, and NOTHING compared to what they will make in next six. To steal it all and run would be like a drug dealer just doing all his drugs instead of selling them. Even if they are willing to screw all their customers because they're just assholes. Slaughtering a cash cow is stupid. How stupid do you think these people are?

$110 million fine is pocket change to a $4 billion company. If BTC-e is going to steal all the money, it's not cause they need a few million dollars for a fine.

Who know's what will happen, but there are a lot of reasons for BTC-e to come back. I wouldn't be surprised if they start again on an onion site and go Tor only.

If they do manage to come back, this drama and attention will make them kings to the anti-government/privacy people. They will be more popular than ever. I think they are smart enough to realize this reality. I think it's entirely possible they won't come back, but I think it's utterly stupid to think they don't want to if they can.

Is there any evidence that the authorities have control of the servers or the funds?

"Notably absent from the statements were indications as to whether the US government would move to permanently shutter the exchange, which just hours ago said that it would return to service."

https://www.coindesk.com/110-million-btc-e-fined-us-vows-crackdown-unregulated-exchanges/?utm_content=buffer30b47&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

It doesn't say anything about actually taking over the website or confiscating the servers or anything. Maybe they will be back... They probably have any friends in many places. We'll see. Still waiting for the FBI take down page to show up.

On the other hand if BTC-e really had a contingency plan to pull a kill switch of sorts and move the server and everything on it to a new place (like thepiratebay.org) and they end up reopening and giving everyone back their funds plus some compensation for loses, they would probably become more popular than ever.

Bitcoins aren't really very anonymous, you can make it time consuming to track you by tumbling, but not impossible if someone has the incentive to do so. I imagine it will be very hard for anyone to actually use those bitcoins without their identity being revealed at some point. At which point they will most assuredly be tortured by hired men to hand over their crypto. Whoever stole the money just made thousands of enemies, many of whom still have significant amounts of money and know how to access the dark web.

If they Fed's have it, that could be a different story, but if that's the case, why did someone take the time to replace the cloudflare page with an official looking "Down for maintenance" page? If they FBI took it down, they usually like to brag about it.

I know there are apparently people who specialize in recovering lost wallets and tracking tumbled funds on the blockchain. There must be more people like me who had a lot, but not most of our money on BTC-e. Perhaps we can discuss how we might go about hiring people who might be able to help us. There must be people more knowledgeable than I am about this stuff out there who could at least help investigate where the money is and possibly who has control of it. I just happen to have a screen shot of my finances right before it shut down. People probably still have cookies on their computers from the last time they looked at their finance pages in case the user info can't be recovered.

Maybe I'm just being optimistic, but if anyone has any ideas, lets start brainstorming together.

Anyone have any idea how we might find out what the heck happened if BTC-e doesn't tell us?