Today, the BTC-e exchange, through its official account on the bitcointalk.org forum, published a statement about its intention to refund funds and possibly resume service.
Today, the BTC-e exchange through the official account on the bitcointalk.org forum, published a statement about the intention to refund funds and possible resumption of service.
As we read in the official statement, the exchange’s servers were seized by the FBI on July 25. The administrators themselves were not entirely sure about the server seizure, because for 6 days they had not been able to obtain information from the hosting provider about the situation and the reason for the service shutdown.
On July 28, the btc-e.com domain was also seized. As you can see, choosing the .com domain was not a very good idea.
In the announcement, we also read that in the next updates (within 1-2 weeks) we will learn about the possibilities of restoring the exchange and refunding the funds. In addition, even if the exchange cannot be restored by the end of August, the refund procedure will take place on September 1.
Interestingly, the exchange itself denies that Alexander Vinnik, arrested last Wednesday, a dozen or so hours after the exchange disappeared, was an employee of the exchange. However, the US Department of Justice has its own version, in which Vinnik was associated with the exchange. Andrei Nikonorov from the ZRCoin project also claims the same. In an interview for kommersant.ru, Nikorov admitted that he knows Vinnik, who in his opinion was a technical employee and dealt with user verification. However, Andrei does not know who owns the exchange.
The return of funds itself seems quite likely, as there is a small probability that there were also cryptocurrency wallets on the servers seized by the FBI. The BTC-e exchange has been operating for 6 years, so it can be assumed that security procedures, including not storing wallets on the exchange engine server, were maintained.
The situation with fiat currencies is worse. The stock exchange itself admits that it needs time to figure out how much money has been seized. Unfortunately, the FBI should not have any major problems here, because banks are happy to cooperate with the services.
As you might imagine, customers with cryptocurrencies on the exchange are in the best position. Fiat currencies have probably been largely confiscated by the FBI and their recovery may be extremely difficult or even impossible.
Of course, we must also take into account the potential worst-case scenario, namely the forced “cooperation” of BTC-e administrators with the services. If, during the refund procedure, the exchange will require verification and confirmation of identity, as our unfortunate Bitcurex did, this scenario will become quite likely.
For now, the situation is not as hopeless as it might seem. As the stock exchange assures:
“To all those who have written us off, our service has always been based on trust and we are ready to prove it now. All funds will be refunded!”
