Mt. Gox under DDoS attack as bitcoin price surges

[Mousey]

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The Japan-based exchange said attackers are seeking to manipulate bitcoin's price
By Jeremy Kirk
April 4, 2013 02:21 AM

IDG News Service - The largest bitcoin exchange said Thursday it is fighting an intense distributed denial-of-service attack it believes is intended at manipulating the price of virtual currency, which has seen volatile price swings in the past few days.

Mt. Gox, which is based in Tokyo, said the attacks have caused its worst trading lags ever and caused error pages to be displayed to traders, according to a post on Facebook. By its own calculation, 80 percent of the bitcoin trades in U.S. dollars are executed on Mt. Gox's trading platform and 70 percent of all trades in other currencies.

The lag of six or seven seconds before a trade is executed "is not acceptable,"....

 

[Mousey]

Trading set to resume

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Bitcoin’s biggest asset is also its biggest liability—no government or regulator controls what people are willing to pay for a little piece of nearly-anonymous computer code. That fact may partially explain why the price of one bitcoin has shot up in recent days and weeks, only to come crashing down again on Wednesday.

On Thursday, Bitcoin’s largest exchange, Mt. Gox, suddenly suspended trading for 12 hours as part of what it described as a “market cooldown.” That pause is set to end at 9:00pm CT on Thursday evening.

It certainly doesn’t help matters that there’s new Mt. Gox-lookalike site serving malware. Also on Thursday, entrepreneurs Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss told the New York Times that they hold approximately 1 percent—roughly $11 million—in bitcoins. In short, Bitcoin may be poised to rise even further, or crash even deeper and faster than ever before.

Ars contacted three major investment banks to inquire if they had any bitcoin holdings—Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and Credit Suisse.

“We have no comment,”....

 

[Scorp]

MTGox & BTC

It will be interesting to see what happens here. There is a real war going on here, between the ostensible freedom offered by bitcoin, and the whole establishment crowd, that wold like to keep you and your money hostage, as well as the shakedown artists and small time hucksters. If BTC can weather this, it will be much the stronger when it's over.

 

[jetset]

It will be interesting to see what happens here. There is a real war going on here, between the ostensible freedom offered by bitcoin, and the whole establishment crowd, that wold like to keep you and your money hostage, as well as the shakedown artists and small time hucksters. If BTC can weather this, it will be much the stronger when it's over.

@Scorp - do you know what software BTConTilt is using?

 

[Scorp]

@Scorp - do you know what software BTConTilt is using?

No, I have no idea. But anything to do with bitcoin, for the best, latest and most informed information definitely go to bitcointalk.org.

It is a tremendously active forum, and there are some very sharp people there.

 

[Mousey]

Bitfloor customers still waiting for refunds

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by Timothy B. Lee - May 6 2013, 1:26pm CDT

More than two weeks after the Bitcoin exchange Bitfloor closed its virtual doors, many customers are still waiting to get their money back. One tally of 78 Bitfloor users on reddit found that Bitfloor owed them $267,000. The number might be much higher once all users are accounted for.

In an e-mailed statement, Bitfloor's legal counsel blamed the delay on a dispute with the firm's bank. And Bitfloor said it has enough funds deposited with the bank to "cover all of its customers' U.S. dollar credits on account."

Last month's Bitfloor shutdown ended a difficult year for the Bitcoin exchange, which had been the fourth most popular forum for trading Bitcoins for dollars. Hackers allegedly stole $250,000 from the exchange in September 2012. Bitfloor founder Roman Shtylman re-opened the exchange later that month in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to earn back the lost cash. Now some users are wondering if they'll lose even more.....