The longest lasting and best known virtual currency trading floor suddenly closed on July 25. The appearance of a bitcoin wallet with the transaction value of 66,000 BTC, suspected as hacked, had bitcoin traders in a panic.

One day later the administrator of the website was arrested by the Greek Police on a money laundering charge amounting to $4 billion. 

A notice was shown on the website that the trading floor would return to normal operation in the next 5-10 days.

Duc Nguyen, an investor from Dak Lak province, said the risk of the trading floor collapse is high. “It is very difficult to open up the trading floor again. If the authorities decide to prosecute, the floor will be forced to shut down,” he said.

BTC-E, a large virtual currency trading floor sudden ‘closure for maintenance’ has  caused anxiety among many Vietnamese investors about the fate of their billions of dong stuck at the floor.

“Even if the floor resumes operation, traders will withdraw money as the floor’s prestige has decreased. This will result in a collapse,” he explained.

Small investors injected tens of millions of dong on the floor, while bigger investors spent up to VND1 billion.

A virtual currency trading website in Vietnam which has relations with BTC-E also halted its operation because of the problem.

Meanwhile, some investors are calm, saying that it happened because of the intervention of the authority, which means that the closure of the trading floor is different from the collapse of Mt.Gox floor caused by a hacker attack.

“If this case is related to the law, appropriate agencies will have measures to allow traders to withdraw money before closing the floor,” D.V.Thang, an investor said.
 
Regarding the arrest of the website’s administrator, N.V.Quan, also an investor, said the floor would be blocked for a long time to serve the investigation.

Meanwhile, an account called Tin Nguyen asserted that only accounts in suspicion for money laundering would be closed for investigation, while other accounts must not be affected.

According to Nguyen Anh Tu in Dong Nai province, coded currency creates value itself, and does not depend on political regime or laws like banknotes. Therefore, investors will only lose money if trading floors deliberately bilk investors.

In fact, Vietnamese investors cannot do anything now except wait. According to Alexa, Vietnam ranks second after the US in the number of visitors to the floor.

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