Ouch. Well, it seems to be confirmed:
"Bitstamp customers can rest assured that their bitcoins held with us as prior to temporary suspension of services on January 5th (at 9am UTC) are completely safe and will be honored in full.
On January 4th, some of Bitstamp’s operational wallets were compromised, resulting in a loss of less than 19,000 BTC. Upon learning of the breach, we immediately notified all customers that they should no longer make deposits to previously issued bitcoin deposit addresses. As an additional security measure, we suspended our systems while we fully investigate the incident and actively engage with law enforcement officials.
This breach represents a small fraction of Bitstamp’s total bitcoin reserves, the overwhelming majority of which are are held in secure offline cold storage systems. We would like to reassure all Bitstamp customers that their balances held prior to our temporary suspension of services will not be affected 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. Customers can stay informed via updates on our website, on Twitter (@Bitstamp) and through Bitstamp customer support at [email protected]."Bitcoin is not hackable with the private key kept private.
Exchanges are hackable because of poor security and/or shitty passwords.
See where the weak link is?
When you send your stash to an exchange you risk losing it all. That is why Smart Contracts and Automated Transactions have been born. It will eliminate all exchanges once this goes mainstream.
Unfortunately, I think exchanges will continue to exist, whether we like it or not. Even if smart contracts and automated transactions are developed to the point where they can provide all of the functionality of centralized exchanges, there will always be the less technical people who prefer the simplicity and familiarity of centralized exchanges.
EDIT: Also, smart contracts and automated transactions won't solve the fiat problem too. As long as there are still people who want to buy bitcoins with fiat or sell bitcoins for fiat, some form of centralized exchange that deals with "real" money (e.g. dollars, pesos, yen, etc.) must exist.
If thieves can deposit loot in a wallet for all to see specially
marked LOOT and then calmly take their time withdrawing it
then bitcoin is doomed for sure
You really need to stop embarassing yourself here and go read an intro to what bitcoin is. If you still fail to understand why the funds can't and won't be "frozen", then go read again. And again. Then, when you understand at least something, come back to share your precious insight on whether or not bitcoin is doomed.
Technically, the funds can be "frozen". But doing so would require the cooperation of the devs and miners. Blacklisting of coins would also destroy the fungible nature of Bitcoin and most would agree that the repercussions of doing so would outweigh the benefits.
No you are wrong. The money is traceable right now but if the person sends it to an exchange and changes it to DRK and then send the DRK to himself its completely untraceable.
Only if it was a small amount. Definitely not the whole 18,000 BTC. In the past 24 hours, DRK has had about 120 BTC volume. Trying to buy 18,000 BTC worth of DRK would drive up the price of DRK to insanely high levels and you'd probably exhaust all of the DRK that's sitting on the exchanges as well.
No you are wrong. The money is traceable right now but if the person sends it to an exchange and changes it to DRK and then send the DRK to himself its completely untraceable.
Or he can just use a Bitcoin mixing service?
This would only work if the hacker mixed a tiny percentage of his funds. The more coins he tries to mix, the less effective it would be. Trying to mix the whole 18,000 BTC in one go would be impossible. 99.99 percent of the output would be tainted coins. The hacker would simply get his coins back mixed in with a tiny percentage of coins from others who were unlucky enough to use the same mixing service when he did.
It would be particularly clever to sign with the 
