See above.  Yes, the tools can be used for both bitcoins and bank instruments, BUT the "finalization" of the theft is much easier for bitcoin.

Both logic and the facts thoroughly disprove the claim that bitcoins are easier to secure than the current alternatives.  It resists only as a religious dogma, it seems...

Euro inflation is 1% this year, isn't it? But never mind.

Devaluation of bitcoin has stolen ~50% of your money in the last two months.

Your turn. 

Of course; so we know that the danger of having keys stolen (particularly from users who are not computer security specialists) is not just a theoretical possibility.

Now compare a trojan that steals bitcoin keys with one that steals bank passwords or credit card data.

The bitcoin trojan can immediately sign and send off a request to transfer all the bitcoins in the compromised address to the thief's address.  The theft will be complete and irreversible before the victim has a chance to check his balance.  The thief does not have to intervene or even monitor the action, and he can be anywhere in the world.  Once the theft is complete, the victim has no recourse: he cannot even prove that the transfer was a theft.  A million such thefts can be performed on the same afternoon, or a single address can be emptied of one million bitcoins, and no one will suspect of anything.

A trojan that steals a bank password may try to send the stolen data to the thief, but that is risky since that communication could be traced.  Instead, the trojan could perhaps log into the bank by itself and issue a wire transfer to the thief's bank account.  The transfer may take hours or days, depending on where the thief is.  During that time, or even after it, the client may notice the theft, call the bank and cancel the transfer.  If the amount it too large, the bank may get suspicious and call the client.  Ditto if ten clients empty their accounts on the same day.

Either way, the thief still has to get the stolen cash out of the bank, within a couple of days at most.  That is risky because accounts owners must provide identity, and cash can be traced across multiple bank transfers.   The thief cannot open thousands of accounts to receive the stolen money.  And so on.

Credit card theft has similar difficulties and risks.

Therefore, it is not surprising that bitcoin thefts are already so common, in spite of the small "market" and the novelty of the concept.  Bitcoin theft must be the hottest thing in the black hacking field now.  Bitcoin is still wearing diapers, and yet bitcoin theft already amounts to well over 500 million dollars -- perhaps more than all the money that has been invested in bitcoin ventures so far (SMBIT, for instance, has got only 50 million).

As bitcoins become more widely used, we can be sure that the hackers who now steal credit cards will turn their weapons to bitcoins. 

OK, where do I start? You know what a 'computer' is?  A 'program'?  A 'hacker'? A 'trojan'? A 'key logger'? A 'hardware patch'? A 'memory dump'? A 'covert channel'? A 'malicious wallet software'?  A 'pseudo-pseudo-random number generator'?   A 'social engineer'? A 'disgruntled employee'? A  'naive user'?

Because bitcoiners keep repeating the same shameless lies? 


Unfortunately the thieves did not read those rebuttals, and continue to steal bitcoins even from computer-savy people.

Compared to other forms of theft, stealing bitcoins is actually very easy, very safe for the thief, and extremely lucrative.

Do I need to tell the many ways in which the private keys of a victim can be obtained by a thief? Once the thief gets hold of the private keys, it can immediately use them to transfer the victim's bitcoins to any other address.  This is easily automated so millions of coins can be stolen from millions of victims while the thief is taking a nap on the beach.  (Or even dead!) Compare that with trying to steal the same amount of cash from the same number of victims by stealing their credit card data or bank passwords. 

A bitcoin-stealing virus or trojan does not need to communicate with the thief or leave any other clue that could identify him.  The thief can leave the stolen coins "sleeping" on the receiving address for years, and then "cash them out" in many ways.  Again, try doing that with credit cards or bank wire transfers.

Another way to steal bitcoins is address phishing: the victim thinks that he is sending bitcoins to his car dealeer, but in fact the account address he got from their webpage is the thief's.

But we do not need to discuss theory. The MtGOX heist alone stole 5% of all the money in the bitcoin economy.  There have been dozens, if not hundreds, of other heists; the total may be 10% of all the money.  AFAIK, none of those thieves has been identified, much less caught; and none of those stolen coins were retrieved.

Any idea of what caused this rally?

It seems to have started on Huobi at 5:55 UTC = 13:55 CST. is that right?

The notice on their webpage is still the one from Apr/17.

Perhaps some news on TV...

Huobi's clients hardly trade between 02:00 am and 06:00 am local time, every day (unless there are big things afoot, like regulation changes).

China's local time is UTC + 8 hours, so the low-volume period is 18:00 to 22:00 UTC.

Hm, I already see a sudden drop of ~30 CNY/BTC on Huobi, apparently a dump of a couple hundred BTC in the span of a few minutes.  Perhaps you are right.

Sorry if the sentence was ambiguous. "They" referred to the articles, not the people.  If someone says that the Cyprus Mail articles are not evidence, he is accusing the reporter who wrote them of either having consciously lied, or of having copied rumors from anonymous posts without checking them.

But those quibbles are irrelevant at this point, agreed?

No, I am not an investor trying to pull the stock price up, nor a speculator trying to push it down; and I do not care about either.

I just don't like scammers and liars, and I am worried about the legion of bitcoin opportunists who are already turning their sights to Latin America as the last large repository of suckers with money.  Isn't that reason enough for me to be interested in the Neo & Bee case?

Agreed, "where is Danny now" is the most important question; but the police will not need our help in that.

On the other hand, what he did before going to Cyprus is relevant because it may help us understand how this mess took off and got so far.  Which in turn may help people recognize and avoid similar disasters in the future.

Part of the reason for the MtGOX disaster was the "libertarian pilosophy" that has come to be associated with bitcoin.  In that philosophy, a shady past, running afoul of the law, lack of proper accounting, financial opaqueness, and avoidance of regulations are not defects; they may even be seen as virtues.   Thus, in particular, MtGOX's clients were not bothered by Karpeles's troubles with the FBI (that apparently made him avoid traveling to the US), or the fact that his exchange was completely unregulated and unaudited.  They did not think of checking Karpeles's past; and even if they did, they would probably not object to what they would have found.

As long as bitcoiners continue to think that way,  the already long list of bitcoin scams and failed-from-the start bitcoin ventures will only continue to grow. 

The dangers of Google Translate:


(From a humdrum blah blah article about bitcoin, in Chinese on a Thai site.)

I would timidly guess that there will not be much change in the price today (Saturday).

Significant changes could only be caused by news about the money input/output channels to the Chinese exchanges, positive or negative; or from the absence of such news when such news could have appeared, since traders could see that absence as a positive sign.   

However, between today and Sunday no news are expected, and probably there will be none.  So there should be no reason for sudden changes in the traders' mood.

The transition from Sunday to Monday is more uncertain.  It is possible that some traders will decide to change their BTC:CNY positions on Sunday night or Monday morning in antecipation of whatever news they think many come out on Monday.

Friday night posts to this thread are something special. 

Just remember your Friendly Government's advice, "don't drink and trade". 

Chinese Slumber Method prediction for Saturday April 19

Prediction valid for: Saturday 2014-04-19, 19:00--19:59 UTC (not before, not after)
Huobi's predicted price: 2888 CNY
Bitstamp's predicted price: 467 USD





Plot legend

Today's data point was rather weak, (S = 0.0053, W = 0.565), but still usable, and almost right on top of the current trendline.  Therefore we used again a straight line trend, fitted by weighted least squares to the last three points; namely, A + B*(d-d0), where d-d0 is the number of days since Apr/16, A = 3187.6 and B = -100.0.

The Bitstamp prediction, as usual, is the Huobi prediction divided by the currency conversion factor R, which was assumed to be 6.19 CNY/USD. It was 6.18, 6.21, 6.23 at the last three Slumber Times.
 
Checking the previous prediction

Prediction was posted on: Friday 2014-04-18, 03:42 UTC
Prediction was valid for: Thursday Friday 2014-04-18, 19:00--19:59 UTC (~15 hours later)

Today was my broken clock moment of glory, it seems:

Huobi's predicted price: 3001 CNY
Huobi's actual price (L+H)/2: 2983 CNY
Error: 18 CNY (~3 USD)

Bitstamp's predicted price: 483 USD
Bitstamp's actual price (L+H)/2: 483 USD
Error: 0 USD
 
NOTE:
  "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts."
    -- Richard Feynman

I don't know whether this is useful to the readers of this thread, but it seems to be at least interesting:

From George Papageorgiou and Øystein Aaby, former top employees of Neo & Bee
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/23cjd9/the_full_picture_of_former_neo_bee_employees/

Also about Neo & Bee, the employees spea out:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/23cjd9/the_full_picture_of_former_neo_bee_employees/

PS. OKCoin's response to that client question, right below it, apparently says that they have only one broker for their recharge code system, and his minimum is "1 W" (一万 = Yi wàn = one wan = 10,000); but they expect to have more brokers eventually.

Curiosity: The OKCoin note (1008440) seems to come from their blog.  Note 1008442 seems to be a question by a customer:

https://www.okcoin.com/t-1008442.html


If I understand correctly, their "recharge code" alternative has a 10,000 CNY minimum, and, since bank transfers are closed, the client is asking how one can do occasional trading with small amounts.

Sorry for not being clear, I meant that TRADERS are not very useful, not the CHINESE traders.