I logged onto Vircurex, and found the below announcement. Although the announcement says they will be freezing accounts from 24 March (tomorrow), when I tried to withdraw my 1.4 bitcoin, it gave an error message, implying (wrongly) that I had made a mistake - so the freeze is already in effect
I converted my bitcoin to peercoin (this was ten minutes ago, 4.30pm UK time) - it worked
I then withdraw half my 300 PPC to the Vault of Satoshi, and the other half to my peercoin client - this appears to have worked too, as they show an incoming transaction
So, if any of you have BTC, litecoin, etc. on Vircurex, and want to get out, convert to PPC - but I suggest you act asap
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Frozen Funds
In preparation of the following, we have with immediate effect stopped
the possibilities to withdraw BTC, LTC, FTC and TRC. All incoming
deposits will also not be credited to the users accounts for the time
being.
On 24th March 2014 we will be freezing the current BTC, LTC, TRC and
FTC accounts, then perform the below distribution of the available
coins and reenable deposits and withdrawals. This action will also
require us to delete all open sell orders for BTC, LTC, FTC and TRC.
As you may very well be aware, we had two incidents last year that
lead to a loss of a significant number of BTC, LTC, FTC, TRC. We had
communicated at that time that we will be covering those losses from
our income, which we have done so far. We had enough coin balances in
our cold wallet to upkeep our platform and the positive cashflow
enabled us to gradually refill the wallets.
Unfortunately we had large fund withdrawals in the last weeks which
have lead to a complete depletion of our cold wallet balance and we
are now facing the option of either closing the site with significant
unrecoverable losses for all or to work out a solution that allows the
exchange to continue to operate and gradually pay back the losses.
We have obviously chosen the later and hence are going to do the following:
- We will introduce an additional balance type called “Frozen Funds”.
Funds in this balance type cannot be used to trade or withdraw. Those
are the balances that the exchange will gradually pay back and hence
transfer back to the available balance over time. - We will move all current balances for BTC, LTC, TRC and FTC to the
“Frozen Balance”, i.e. your balance will be set to 0. - We’ll take the current available cold storage balance and
distribute it based on the below described distribution logic. - Monthly we will take the net profit of the exhchange and credit
back that amount distributed to the users based on the described
distribution logic.
The freezing of the balances is a one-time action, it does not affect
future deposits in any ways.
Distribution logic
50% of the amount will be distributed top down and the other 50% will
be distributed bottom up.
Top down means: credit the amount from the largest account balance
down to the smaller accounts Bottom up: credit the amount from the
smallest account balance to the larger accounts.
Example
User 1: 5 BTC
User 2: 4 BTC
User 3: 3 BTC
User 4: 3 BTC
User 5: 3 BTC
User 6: 3 BTC
User 7: 1 BTC
Amount to distribute: 12 BTC:
Step 1: Top down distribute 6 BTC:
User 1: Credit 5 BTC
User 2: Credit 1 BTC, remaining frozen balance = 3 BTC
Step 2: Bottom up distribute 6 BTC:
User 7: Credit 1 BTC
User 6: Credit 3 BTC
User 5: Credit 2 BTC, remaining frozen balance = 1 BTC
This approach has the advantages that
all users will eventually receive their funds, though the timeframe
depends on the monthly volume available
new deposits and users are not penalized, thus supporting the ongoing
operations of the platform
fund withdrawals from the available funds are guaranteed, no surprises
or unecessary delays
We believe that this is the best way forward and hope for your support
and understanding.