As far as i know There is nothing weird nor wrong concerning bitstamp. The company is located in UK and the owner is somehow involved with the bitcoin foundation and promoting bitcoin in a "honest" way. I would be more concerned about mtGox
True. When I've decided to have some adventure with bitcoin, I've applied for account verification on both MtGox and Bitstamp. During a month I've got Bitstamp account verified, managed to earn my first $50, then to loose them yesterday ;-). Anyway I'm still a learning noob, so kinda expected this
. MtGox is still processing my verification and just changed "10 working days" to "20". It turned to be good for me as in the meantime I've read a lot and learned about where the MtGox vs Bitstamp spread comes from. So I've avoided "let's buy on Bitstamp then sell on MtGox" trap...
Yesterday incident in fact raised my trust in Bitstamp. I guess they were dealing with DDoS attack, and they dealt it well. The rest of their site and the trade system were running continuously. I was able to withdraw my
BTC0.x to my private wallet while the main page was out. Transaction was processed in less than two minutes (and confirmed a minute later). Maybe I've panicked a bit, but anyway now I have decided to hold and wait, to get my $50 back ;-). Of course I will be back on Bitstamp then. In fact I have not withdrawn fiat from Bitstamp yet, but there are no complaints on Internet, while MtGox problems are broadly described. Then if MtGox finally approve my verification I will maybe sell some small amount of
BTC there and try to withdraw fiat, to see for myself how many months it takes...