Bitstamp co-founder Damijan Merlak said that Bitstamp plans to resume its operations in the next 24 hours.

Bitstamp service was temporarily suspended service as a result of a Bitcoin wallet breach. Bitstamp CEO Nejc Kodrič confirmed in a statement that “less than 19,000 BTC” was stolen due to a Bitstamp operational wallet being compromised.

Also read: Bitcoin Exchange Bitstamp Confirms Loss of ~18,866 BTC (~$5 million USD) from Hot Wallet

At this moment the Bitstamp website states:

“We have temporarily suspended Bitstamp services. Bitstamp customers can rest assured that their bitcoins held with us prior to temporary suspension of services on January 5th (at 9am UTC) are completely safe and will be honored in full. [We] appreciate customers’ patience during this disruption of services. We are working to transfer a secure backup of the Bitstamp site onto a new safe environment and will be bringing this online in the coming days.”

Setting Up a Duplicate in San Francisco

The new article where Bitstamp announces that service will be resumed in the next 24 hours is in Slovenian, but Reddit user natri provided a translation of the important information:

Slovenian bitcoin exchange Bitstamp remains closed – hackers supposedly stole around 19000 bitcoins from its servers (4,3 million eur). “Bistamp remains liquid, but I can’t tell more because of the investigation” said co-founder Damijan Merlak and added they closed the exchange because otherwise “important trails could be erased”. “With experts we are currently setting up a duplicate of entire infrastructure in San Francisco, which is bound to finish in the next 24 hours. At that time we will continue our services.” explained Merlak for STA. At the exchange they claim to have “more than enough reserves” to cover lost bitcoins. Hackers supposedly stole only “small part” of all bitcoins – because of cases as this one, exhanges keep majority of their bitcoins in offline computers.

Images from Bitstamp and Shutterstock.