Bitstamp, one of the largest Bitcoin exchanges resumed trading on Friday evening, following four days of suspended services following the companies’ hot wallets being compromised, resulting in a loss of approximately $5 million.
In a situation bound to automatically draw comparisons to the Mt Gox hack of almost 12 months ago, the company were praised for their regular updates, reassuring customers that their Bitcoin were safe, a stark contrast from the radio silence Mt Gox’s customers were faced with. The professional approach shows the increased maturity within the Bitcoin, which many, even Bitcoin’s critics identified.
Bitstamp relaunched with a revamped website and immediately updated customers about the hack, detailing new precautions that the company were implementing to improve security having re built their system “from the ground up”
[blockquote]By redeploying our system from a secure backup onto entirely new hardware, we were able to preserve the evidence for a full forensic investigation of the crime,” he said. “While this decision means we have not been able to provide you with services for a number of days, we feel this extra measure of precaution was in the best interest of our customers.[/blockquote]
New Security Features
The most notable improvement to Bitstamp’s service is the announcement that they have launched a three key multi signature system via BitGo integration, a security measure that is listed as being “bank grade” on the companies website. Bitstamp hold two of the keys, with the third being held by BitGo.
Bitstamp also announced that as well as rebuilding their system via a clean backup, they have migrated their service to Amazon’s Web Services platform.
Banner image courtesy of Bitstamp.net