Update: the account compromise is now confirmed, see the statement from Bitstamp at the end of the post.

Bitstamp Ltd. account holder details may have been compromised after the company advised customers not to send Bitcoin to their hot wallets Sunday.

The problem first came to attention when users were confronted with empty wallets, before later receiving a message from Bitstamp that read as follows:

Dear customer,

Today our transaction processing server detected problems with our hot wallet and stopped processing withdrawals.

You should STOP SENDING bitcoin deposits to your Bitstamp account IMMEDIATELY as private keys of your deposit address may be lost.

Your bitcoins already deposited with us are stored in a cold wallet and can not be affected.

We will send you more info as soon as possible.

Best regards,

Bitstamp team

The empty wallet was then replaced with a message further stating that new deposit addresses will be forthcoming.

Mt. Gox 2.0?

Social media speculated on the problem, with some suggesting there are parallels to the collapse of Mt. Gox in February 2014. In the case of Mt. Gox a number of high profile issues preceded its ultimate collapse, one being that they claimed to have been hacked.

Users have complained of having withdrawal problems with Bitstamp this past week, while another user claims that the company hasn’t responded to support tickets for 7 days.

In the run up to the Mt. Gox collapse, investors heavily sold Bitcoin driving the price down; the price of Bitcoin has dropped 16% since January 1st, with some suggesting investors may be selling out of the market before another major collapse drives the value of Bitcoin even lower.

Bitstamp has had some minor issues previously, with accusations in March 2014 that customer details had been compromised, although in that case it would appear that the mail server was compromised versus Bitcoin wallets.

It’s way too early to say whether we’re seeing Mt. Gox 2.0 as some are suggesting, but the Bitstamp issues will do nothing to encourage trust in the cryptocurrency markets.

Founded by Nejc Kodric in 2011, the London based company is backed by Pantera Capital who invested $10 million into the company in December 2013.

We’ve reached out to the company for comment and if we receive a reply we’ll update the post.

Update 5:36am EST: Bitstamp hast made a formal statement confirming that the compromise has taken place; of note at the time of writing the entire Bitstamp service is now offline.

We have reason to believe that one of Bitstamp’s operational wallets was compromised on January 4th, 2015.

As a security precaution against compromises Bitstamp only maintains a small fraction of customer bitcoins in online systems. Bitstamp maintains more than enough offline reserves to cover the compromised bitcoins.

IN THE MEANTIME, PLEASE DO NOT MAKE DEPOSITS TO PREVIOUSLY ISSUED BITCOIN DEPOSIT ADDRESSES. THEY CANNOT BE HONORED!

Customer deposits made prior to January 5th, 2015 9:00 UTC are fully covered by Bitstamp’s reserves. Deposits made to newly issued addresses provided after January 5th, 2015 9:00 UTC can be honored.

Bitstamp takes our security and soundness very seriously. In an excess of caution, we are suspending service as we continue to investigate. We will return to service and amend our security measures as appropriate.

We’ll update if we hear more.