BTC-e.com has been offline for roughly 48hrs now!

Their updates on twitter are unsurprisingly not very revealing!

At firts I though:
"Ok, maybe something to do with the looming hardfork discussion?!"

Then I though:
"Damn, I hope this is not going to be another Cryptsy!"

This morning I read:
"Alleged BTC-E Admin Arrested for Laundering $4 Billion in Bitcoin."

^{image source: shutterstock.com}

DAYUMM!

Ok, I am not exactly new to this game!

I never keep much on any exchange site. Really only the smaller altcoins, the ones I can't be bothered setting up my own wallet for, stay there while "daytrading" them.

I am also not a big trader at all, so there isn't much to lose in my accounts anyway.

I've lost a small amount of money on cryptsy before, I can't recall how much that was, maybe $50 worth of altcoins, not too much and though it was disappointing, it was still easy to shrug off.

This time though, I did have a significant part of my crypto-riches (significant to me at least) on BTC-e.

The recent swings in LTC prompted me to trade some slighly larger positions. Larger in my book. I had (or have?!) roughly 0.1 BTC, 0.5 ETH and 5 LTC left with BTC-e.

What really irks me about the situation though: I had halted trading activities and have been holding my positions for a few days. I didn't cash out from the exchange out of pure lazyness! I was preoccupiued with playing Blockchain Sherlock on Steemit and feeling smart about it.

Feeling smart enough to act stupid - and leave my money on an exchange site!

Don't be stupid - Withdraw if you're not trading!

The story starts with a release on AP:

Greek authorities say they have arrested a Russian man wanted in the United States on suspicion of masterminding a money laundering operation involving at least $4 billion through bitcoin transactions.

Since then reddit is all ablaze about it:

Yeah this sounds like BTC-E.
If they didn't specifically mention 2011 I wouldn't think too much of it. But that really narrows it down.
Who knows for sure. But the coincidences are lining up so far. I hope I'm wrong here though as the idea of at least one exchange that was out of reach of the US was always a nice idea, even if I had no use for it personally so far. [by u/ff6878]

And all relevant cryptocurrency news outlets have started breaking the story this morning!

Fingers Crossed!

We can only speculate for now!

We don't have any confirmations yet. BTC-e is the oldest, and has probably been the most reliable, "anonymous" exchange site out there.

But if the authorities are really finally on their ass... ugh! My hope is dwindeling!

edit:

• Recent developments are indicating that the arrested suspect might actually be related to the MtGOX theft. Fellow steemian @crypto-p just posted about it [here].
• Latest news claim the arrested Alexander Vinnik is prosecuted for running BTC-e and being involved with laundering the stolen funds from MtGOX. As it stand he could get off the hook with a $110million fine?! Maybe there is hope BTC-e will open again... desperate optimism
• It's official! The feds have seized the btc-e.com domain and Alexander Vinnik is being charged for several allegations, including the MtGOX theft. DAMN!

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follow @fraenk

... it's free!

_{steem-on and prosper}

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Did You have money on BTC-e, too?

Do You think the two stories might actually be unrelated?

Go ahead, tell me how stupid I was!!