Bitcoin Drama News Round-Up

During an interview yesterday, one Bitcoin investor described the burgeoning economy as “a Mexican soap opera–there’s always some kind of drama.” Indeed!

Let’s review the freshest crises:  Chile and San Francisco-based TradeHill claims e-payments platform Dwolla has been reversing transactions [The Bitcoin Show]. Dwolla responds by changing its terms of services to say “receiving party may be subject to chargebacks” [Bitcoin Money]. Web-based wallet MyBitcoin.com, where Betabeat was keeping all our Bitcoins in the world, has been down since Friday with no explanation, leading to speculation that the admins either forgot to pay their electric bill or have made off with user deposits [MyBitcoin]. That’s not even the worst of it.

What is–sorry, was–possibly the third-largest BTC exchange, Bitomat.pl, has lost all its deposits and taking 17,000 BTC out of circulation permanently after the founder tried to switch machines without realizing that Amazon’s cloud hosting service irrevocably wipes *all* data when a server is turned off. The founder is now selling the domain for 17,000 BTC to try to reimburse users for their deposits [Hacker News].

On the positive side, TradeHill is hiring, newcomer exchange Atlanta-based CampBX has a brick-and-mortar office (or at least a picture of one), the Bitcoin World Conference and Expo is coming up August 19-21 in New York and continues to pick up steam, and BTC is still trading over $13. What a world.