What makes the situation suspicious is that apparently they usually only kept 3k or so in the hot wallet according to someone who analyzed the address. Shortly before the "hack" there was a large deposit made into the account making the large theft possible. How reliable the blockchain analysis is on which the above conclusions are based I do not know but if that happens to be true its hard to imagine how this could be a just a case of a hacked hot wallet.
I just don't understand how bitstamp, one of the worlds leading bitcoin exchanges, can have their wallets compromised to the tune of 19,000 bitcoins. Does this smell like an inside job or a royal screw up?
Perhaps deposits are put directly into the hot wallet, and since the price was plummeting, they were getting a larger than usual amount of deposits?
If it really wasn't an inside job, maybe the person knew about the exploit for a while and was waiting for a price drop so they could snag a larger amount of bitcoins in one go.
