Bitcoin Trader, a Bitcoin arbitrage and investment service, has declared bankruptcy.
It’s the result of a hack, according to Bitcoin Trader owner John Carley. He said in a statement that while they were preparing the results of an audit done on the site, “our bitcoin wallet has been hacked and emptied, just after exchanging our fiat holdings within the exchanges to bitcoin and transferring our entire holdings to our wallet, in order to (sic) proof our solvency.”
Carley also claims to have been contacted by the hacker, who offered a ransom for returning the funds, “but haven’t heard back from him for several days now.”
Bitcoin Trader’s social media accounts have also been closed. It’s almost as if they never existed.
Deja Vu
For a community hit so hard from scam after scam after hack after hack, Bitcoin Trader’s behaviour seems to be just part of the game.
Many members of the community had requested Bitcoin Trader prove their solvency earlier this year, a request which was met with resistance from Carley himself. This was enough to cause concern among many members of the community that Bitcoin Trader wasn’t what it claimed to be.
In Carley’s statement, he blames the hack on the proof fo solvency request. After converting all their funds to Bitcoin and transfering it to their wallet in order to prove their solvency, a hacker emptied out their wallet.
As a result, Bitcoin Trader’s investors are left empty-handed, much like they must have felt after Mt. Gox collapsed.
A Likely Story?
“Hackers” have quickly become an easy scapegoat for any Bitcoin-related business to get out of a sticky situation.
Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles has blamed his exchange’s collapse on a hack. Meanwhile, the other two possibilities, gross negligence or inside shenanigans, are equally as likely.
This is not to say that hackers aren’t real, and that there aren’t legitimate security threats online. But the more Bitcoiners hear about their favourite services being “hacked”, especially by organizations of dubious authenticity, the less seriously the real security threats will be taken.
Bitcoin Trader Collapses Amid Claims Of Hack
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