Bitstamp Suspends Withdrawals

Bitstamp Logo

It comes as news that one of the biggest online bitcoin exchanges, Bitstamp, has temporarily suspended withdrawals.

This announcement comes in the wake of one of the latest setbacks to the digital currency. Last week, Mt. Gox, one of the original bitcoin exchanges, announced that it had to halt withdrawals from its network. The issue has still not been resolved by them.

Bitstamp Explains

According to Bitstamp, the website was swamped with large requests of data which is referred to as a denial-of-service attack. For this reason, it had to temporarily suspended the withdrawal and depositing services on its exchange site. “Currently it has suspended processing Bitcoin withdrawals due to inconsistent results reported by our bitcoin wallet, caused by a denial-of-service attack using transaction malleability to temporarily disrupt balance checking. As such, Bitcoin withdrawal and deposit processing will be suspended temporarily until a software fix is issued,” said Bitstamp in a released statement.

Users will not be able to withdraw funds until the issue gets resolved. Furthermore, transactions that were not able to be processed on February 10 and 11 will be canceled. The amounts will be added back to the users’ wallets.

Resuming Shortly

Bitstamp is hopeful that the issue will be resolved quickly and things will be back to running as usual.

“This is a denial-of-service attack made possible by some misunderstandings in Bitcoin wallet implementations. These misunderstandings have simple solutions that are being implemented as we speak, and we’re confident everything will be back to normal shortly.”

The value of bitcoin has plummeted from around $800 to about $600 as a result of these technical issues. Andreas Antonopoulos, chief security officer for Blockchain.info, commented on the issue by stating “This is a nuisance attack. Funds have not been lost, and have not been affected. What it’s done is slow down their accounting system from reconciling transactions.”

Bitstamp further stated that

“no funds have been lost and no funds are at risk.”

New Beginning in Sight

These recent developments are not indications of failure in bitcoin but rather it is an indication of the versatility of the currency. The digital currency went through many hits in the past but it was able to persevere. There is much room for growth for bitcoin as a digital currency and for the bitcoin community. Many people across the globe have placed their faiths in the currency and hope that it will bring about a positive change to the world at large.

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