Hospital of Exchanges - Exchanges running into some kind of trouble...

[Principe]

Hello guys. As you already know running an altcoin exchange is a quite competitive business. We already seen a lot of them closing their doors, being hacked or just vanishing with deposited coins.

I'm opening this thread to collect announcements of exchanges that are having some kind of troubles.

News, contributions, comment welcome down here.

[Principe]

It seems that there has been a “goxing” at Justcoin:

Dear Justcoin user,

You are receiving this email because you have a balance of STR at Justcoin. STR deposits, withdrawals and trading have been disabled for the last three days. This is an explanation of what has happened and what the status is.

A network-wide weakness in how both Ripple and Stellar communicated transactions was exploited by an unknown third-party to to deposit false IOUs through Ripple/Stellar to Justcoin. These were consequently withdrawn to their own payment networks as native currencies. The result was that our hotwallets were emptied. Most of our customers' funds is in cold storage but the amounts were still significant. Justcoin will not operate as a fractional reserve and therefore we decided to lock down all services affected until we had a solution ready.

Justcoin cannot and will not accept taking the responsibility for this weakness in the network. It is caused by a feature that is poorly documented and has been present in both Ripple and Stellar for a long time. Other gateways, exchanges and native transaction explorers have also been affected. There is also documented that the security vulnerability has been known by the network developers for at least 2 months without any kind of explicit and direct warning to affected gateways and other services. A thorough and technical explanation of the weakness can be read here: https://medium.com/@abrkn/partial-payments-ripple-stellar-vulnerability-in-the-wild-29aaefd8a7ac .

The result is that as of now there will be imposed a partial 'hold' on all STR balances. This hold will be representing the amount of STR that is missing. Deposits will be disabled until we are 100% confident that we are no longer affected by this weakness or any other yet undiscovered. Deposits that have been made between the shutdown and now will be credited in full once deposits are opened. Trading and withdrawal of the STR that is not on hold is now enabled. Please allow delays on withdrawals due to moving of funds from cold storage to hot wallet. The percentage of each STR balance that is on partial hold is 4,18%.

We can assure you that it is our intention that the partial holds will be lifted. We are looking at different options and are having a dialogue with Ripple Labs and Stellar foundation. We will try to figure out a way to solve this, one way or another. Expect regular updates.

We are terribly sorry for the situation but are asking for your understanding and patience. If you have any questions that are not answered here please don't hesitate to ask. Allow some time for us to answer as our support is under high pressure at this time.

Sincerely,

[secco]

Justcoin Hacked. Update. CoinTelegraph Article by Carlo Caraluzzo @ 2014-10-14 10:44 AM

http://cointelegraph.com/news/112727/stellar-and-ripple-hacked-justcoin-to-the-rescue

[secco]

Cryptocurrency Exchange Cryptsy and Owner Paul Vernon Face Lawsuit

Skye Bonnow is an altcoin trader that had 140 BTC swiped from his Cryptsy account in January of 2014. Skye maintains that he adhered to Cryptsy’s Terms and Conditions and was still utterly defrauded of his bitcoins.

The lawsuit is currently seeking the maximum damages for the lost coins: treble the amount of the current usd value, or $180,000. Skye is using Silver Law Group to bring his claims against Paul Vernon and Cryptsy, who operate as PROJECT INVESTORS, INC.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/cryptocurrency-exchange-cryptsy-owner-paul-vernon-face-lawsuit/

[secco]

CoinTelegraph on the same matter:

http://cointelegraph.com/news/112792/florida-law-firm-files-two-lawsuits-against-cryptsy-and-bitcoin-savings-and-trust

[Principe]

Justcoin.com is back. Official announcement, sent via email:

Starting November 24th, Justcoin.com will be back, managed by a new team. You may have your account moved to the new Justcoin.com. As a bonus, you'll get zero trading fees for the first month!

Ready? Click below to have your account transferred to the new Justcoin.com:

Join the new Justcoin.com
or click here: http://new.justcoin.com

More details to follow! Twitter verification: @jstcoin

Sincerely,
Klaus and Andreas
The Justcoin Founders

[Principe]

Justcoin.com is back. Introducing the new Justcoin team. Official announcement, sent via email:

Starting November 24th, Justcoin.com will be back, managed by the ANX team.

ANX has been servicing clients since June, 2013. It was founded by two Australians and a Canadian, and is incorporated in Hong Kong. The team is very transparent, more information is available here.

"Andreas and Klaus have set a high standard of customer service and transparency. We have no illusions that the trust they have built must be earned all over again by the new team. We are looking forward to this challenge!"
Dave Chapman, COO, ANX.

ANX recently undertook a full third party cash and crypto audit.

Ready to continue trading STR, XRP, and BTC? To have your account sent to the new Justcoin.com, and qualify for a month's free trading click here: http://new.justcoin.com/

Sincerely,
Klaus and Andreas
The Justcoin Founders

[Principe]

Justcoin, From CoinTelegraph: ANX Acquires Justcoin, Incorporates Platform within a Week

Hong Kong based exchange ANX has announced its acquisition of Norwegian exchange Justcoin, expanding its presence in the European Bitcoin market.

The move sees Justcoin moving to run on ANX infrastructure, as well as incorporating features already available on ANX.

The Oslo-based exchange had previously announced its shutdown at the end of October, following a dispute with Ripple and its Norwegian bank cutting off financial services. A rescue deal with Dutch exchange Clevercoin once looked likely, but Justcoin stressed that its priority was customer funds rather than future operations.

http://cointelegraph.com/news/112963/anx-acquires-justcoin-incorporates-platform-within-a-week

[Principe]

Blockchain Reimbursing Stolen Bitcoins to Users 

Hundreds of bitcoins have been stolen yesterday from Blockchain.info users made temporarily vulnerable by a technical issue during a software update of the popular Bitcoin wallet. The company has plugged the security hole, and now they are reimbursing the users who lost their bitcoins.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/blockchain-reimbursing-stolen-bitcoins-users/

[secco]

BITSTAMP SERVICE TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED

Today the main page of BitStamp looks as following:

BITSTAMP SERVICE TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED

We have reason to believe that one of Bitstamp’s operational wallets was compromised on January 4th, 2015.
As a security precaution against compromises Bitstamp only maintains a small fraction of customer bitcoins in online systems. Bitstamp maintains more than enough offline reserves to cover the compromised bitcoins.

IN THE MEANTIME, PLEASE DO NOT MAKE DEPOSITS TO PREVIOUSLY ISSUED BITCOIN DEPOSIT ADDRESSES. THEY CANNOT BE HONORED!

Customer deposits made prior to January 5th, 2015 9:00 UTC are fully covered by Bitstamp’s reserves. Deposits made to newly issued addresses provided after January 5th, 2015 9:00 UTC can be honored.

Bitstamp takes our security and soundness very seriously. In an excess of caution, we are suspending service as we continue to investigate. We will return to service and amend our security measures as appropriate.

Bitstamp Team

CoinDesk article on the matter:

http://www.coindesk.com/bitstamp-reports-hot-wallet-issue-tells-customers-not-deposit-bitcoin/

[secco]

BITSTAMP SERVICE TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED

CoinTelegraph: http://cointelegraph.com/news/113244/bitstamp-warns-users-to-stop-depositing-at-the-exchange-cites-problem-with-hot-wallet

[secco]

BITSTAMP SERVICE TEMPORARILY SUSPENDED

Bitstamp Claims $5 Million Lost in Hot Wallet Hack:
http://www.coindesk.com/bitstamp-claims-roughly-19000-btc-lost-hot-wallet-hack/

Bitstamp's Ongoing Outage Echoes Through Bitcoin Economy:
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-ecosystem-feels-far-reaching-effects-bitstamp-outage/

[Principe]

Good news! BitStamp restarting the activities:

We are happy to announce that we are back open for business with a newly redeployed website and backend systems that are safer and more secure than ever. Thank you for your patience during our temporary disruption of services this week. We’d like to share with our customers and community an update on the events of this week.

What happened?
On January 4th, some of Bitstamp’s operational wallets were compromised, resulting in a loss of less than 19,000 BTC. This breach represents a small fraction of Bitstamp’s total bitcoin reserves, the overwhelming majority of which are held in secure offline cold storage systems.  We can assure customers that any bitcoins held with us are completely safe and have been fully honored. 

Upon learning of the breach, we immediately notified all customers that they should no longer make deposits to previously issued bitcoin deposit addresses. As an additional security measure, we suspended our systems to fully investigate the incident and actively engage with law enforcement officials. 

Why did Bitstamp go offline for a few days?
We took the decision to rebuild our systems from the ground up from a secure backup for a few reasons. By redeploying our system from a secure backup onto entirely new hardware, we were able to preserve the evidence for a full forensic investigation of the crime. We also took this time to implement a number of new security measures and protocols so that customers can resume using Bitstamp with full confidence and trust. While this decision meant we were not been able to provide you with services for a number of days, we feel this extra measure of precaution was in the best interest of our customers.

What’s new?Our team worked day and night to rebuild and restore security to the Bitstamp site.  On Friday, January 9th we relaunched our site and services in full. Customers have resumed transacting with us quickly, safely, and confidently. Bitstamp is now fully operational with a number of key improvement

Multi-sig - With the implementation of BitGo’s multisig technology, Bitstamp is now the first and only major bitcoin exchange to incorporate the industry’s best security practices available today. 
Completely new hardware infrastructure - The Bitstamp systems are running on 100% new hardware deployed from a completely secure backup of our code and data.
Amazon Web Services - Bitstamp is now running on Amazon’s world-class AWS cloud infrastructure, architected to be one of the most secure and reliable cloud computing environments available.
Commission-free trading - As a note of thanks to our loyal customers, all transactions conducted on Bitstamp through the end of the North American Bitcoin Conference on January 17th (at 11:59pm UTC) will be commission-free.   
We appreciate your patience and understanding during this week’s disruption of services. Since 2011, we’ve worked long and hard to become one of the largest and most trusted bitcoin exchanges in the world. While this has been a time of challenge for our company, we expect to emerge from this experience having set an even higher bar than before for trust and confidence in our services.

For further information regarding our redeployment, please visit our website at www.bitstamp.net.

We appreciate your patience and understanding over the past few days and look forward to continuing to serve you.
 
Nejc Kodrič
CEO
Bistamp

[Principe]

Bitcoin Exchange Processor EgoPay Freezes Funds, Disables API

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-exchange-egopay-freeze-client-funds/

[secco]

SwapHole is down, no announcement made. The site states:

We are preparing a relaunch of SwapHole.com soon!

Let's wait and see...