Techblogger wrap up
4 stars based on
68 reviews
I think it would be wise to break down my thoughts on exchanges, what represents risk with them, and what I suggest people do. The whole purpose of bitcoin is security in decentralization. Bitcoin exchanges are basically the antithesis of the point of bitcoin protocol. People are working diligently to make decentralized exchanges, but this is near-impossible to do for fiat without long wait times for transfers to occur, and very little protection from changebacks.
Every major bitcoin exchange represents this centralization of funds risk. They are all equally risky in my eyes for this reason. Many people, especially on Reddit, are warning that BTC-e is the next exchange to go down, calling their anonymity the problem. Gox was the largest exchange, the most known exchange, with the most known and reachable CEO. Gox was the polar opposite of anonymity of exchange owners and we see how that worked out. They all have the inherent problem of centralization of funds, and third party risk.
How quickly does customer support respond to you? How often does the exchange communicate with the public in general? How quickly does the technical support team fix problems?
How transparent is the organization? Both Bitstamp and BTC-e promise to show accounting to the public in a monthly-like fashion. Neither has done this yet, but this would be a major step forward in my eyes. If you deposit and withdraw BTC, you do not need to give out your information. If you have funds that you wish to trade, spread your funds across these exchanges evenly, or in order of how much you trust them if you want. This seems to me to be the best way to mitigate risk of the exchanges.
On an exchange you think you want to be a part of, or any website that has an account of btc e bitcoin withdrawal feelings, try to recover your password. See what hoops you are forced to jump through in order to acquire your current btc e bitcoin withdrawal feelings yikes if they give you your password, run! Do this including two factor authentication. There are two doors to the room. It does not matter how secure one door is if the other door is cardboard.
Right now, Reddit is, in my opinion, the best source for Bitcoin news. That said, rumors run rampant, and people engage in malicious attacks against users, the markets, and specific exchanges there. Be careful and do your due diligence. This will be discussed in depth below. As they say, buy the rumor, sell the news. Look at the size of the wallet your funds get pooled into. Simply tracking this can save you some woes down the road, and can warn you in advance if an exchange is likely to stop withdraws soon…which will certainly drive the price of bitcoin down as people panic.
Exchanges are highly profitable, but they are massive targets for attacks. Do the math, and understand that the owners are massive targets: If you are not familiar, most exchanges have two forms of storage of funds. There is a hot wallet, which serves as the functioning, online wallet, that services withdraws and deposits.
Only when you deposit or withdraw does anything actually become official on the blockchain. Exchange volume is public information. Take volume, multiply by fees, and you have exchange gross revenue. Put yourself in their shoes. It should be fairly obvious what the outcome will be if they lost all of their hot wallet funds. If it will cost more than one year to btc e bitcoin withdrawal feelings the entire hot wallet, this should be a red flag, as the exchange must also pay their running costs.
Now, most people consider the fee of 0. Actually, keep in mind that you pay 0. This really means BTC-e makes 0. Next, consider how many btc e bitcoin withdrawal feelings the exchange has gone without a breach, do the math, and deduce how much money the owners are rolling in…and then btc e bitcoin withdrawal feelings you will understand better why people would like to be btc e bitcoin withdrawal feelings.
Some people in this fund have requested anonymity based on drops in the bucket btc e bitcoin withdrawal feelings to the money that the CEO s of BTC-e have. Despite being uncomfortable with the fact a CEO chooses to be anonymous, please understand that btc e bitcoin withdrawal feelings really is a massive risk for these CEOs to be public. Sure, BTC-e is anonymous, but look at how much money they are making by honoring the trust of the users. I wager btc e bitcoin withdrawal feelings anonymity is to alleviate legal troubles to an extent, but for btc e bitcoin withdrawal feelings physical safety as well.
My personal thoughts on the exchanges that I trust meaning I put money with them: These opinions are, for the most part, anecdotal. This is just my opinion, and, in the end, I intend btc e bitcoin withdrawal feelings evenly diversify funds across each of the exchanges. Their anonymity is in place, I believe, to ease legal pressure against them and to remain hard to find and torture for money, honestly. Gox down was legal pressure, and I doubt Karpelas was able to avoid forced protection of some crime ring.
BTC-e has been breached in the btc e bitcoin withdrawal feelings, and the owners elected to pay everyone back who lost money. This is not a definitive measure, however. Gox was also breached, and also refunded victims. Now they are bankrupt. Btc e bitcoin withdrawal feelings anonymity, in part, allows them to not seek personal information on their users.
While you may not realize it, this is a massive bonus. First, it tells me that BTC-e owners are likely not tied too tightly with the Russian mafia, since the collection of this information is somewhat valuable. If you were on Mt. Gox, your photo ID, address, and possibly your bank information are now floating about.
It may have already been. Most websites are not aware that they have been breached and personal information is stolen. Their English is not very good, but this is not a ground to distrust on.
Their quick actions and development fixes surrounding malleability were nothing short of impressive. They promise to prove reserves, which will be great to see if it happens. No clue why it is taking so long to prove this, however.
Based in the UK, founders are known, and legally they are up to speed. I like that about Bitstamp. Their API crashes a lot during high volume trading sessions, which tells me they are tightly budgeting their servers.
Their customer support is also very slow, except for the verification process, which was light-speed and very impressive. Customer support queries take about days for a response, which I am not a fan of. This tells me they are also slacking in the budget here. Keep in mind, the above is purely anecdotal… which is why I still bother with this exchange.
This is both good and bad. Good that their security seems to be a high priority…but we have yet to see how they handle theft. Based in Hong Kong, and apparently up to speed in legalities. You do btc e bitcoin withdrawal feelings have to provide ID information, which is great.
I definitely do not want to send my ID information to Hong Kong. If you deposit and withdraw in BTC, you are fine. I am a huge fan of this setup. Their API has also been the easiest to deal with, which signals to me that their developers understand developers well.
They allow shorting, stop loss, trailing stop, limit, and market orders. This is very impressive, and btc e bitcoin withdrawal feelings to me that they are in it to be a leader. I am not positive that this is the reasoning behind this, as it might be some sort of law that they are adhering to… but it sure seems to me like this is a way to shrug off losses if they happen and not take liability.
What makes an exchange risky? What actually makes the btc e bitcoin withdrawal feelings less risky? How can you best decrease risk? Set a high filter on Reddit: Now they are bankrupt BTC-e anonymity, in part, allows them to not seek personal information on their users.