Bitcoin Forum

I need to blow off some steam about the highly unregulated cryptocurrency exchange business and to expose a common scam used to defraud unsuspecting traders

I'm not going to go over all the scammy practices i have noticed during my tradings as i don't want to write a 10000 pages book, but this one deserve special attention

Many exchanges advertise and sell securities that are actually not withdrawable and actually do not exist on their books

What they do is set attractive low rates for X or Z cryptocurrency to lure people into buying, but what buyers don't know is that 1- they don't actually have any of the assets sold on the marketplace, 2- there is therfore no withdrawal option for them and 3- the trading pool is almost entirely bot generated by the exchange. This is among other offences what is called wash trading and are frauds punishable by law

Once the buyer has bought the security he then finds out that he cannot withdraw on his personal web/ desktop wallet or cold storage, either because the withdraw function doesn't exist on the website or because the exchange witholds payments forever pretexting "technical problems".
The buyer is then left with no choice but cancelling the pending transfer, buying back a "withdrawable" currency from the exchange bots at a steep price + 2xtrading fees and leave the scene with a huge loss.

He actually never owned anything because the exchange never had the currency anyway but in the end he had to hand them over his money. A total scam

I always check before buying if all the withdrawal functions of the exchange look activated, but even then i've myself been scammed several times by exchanges holding forever your withdrawal to force you to cancel the transfer and buy back your own coins at a loss to get out

The law enforcement agencies should do a low of cleaning, but meanwhile, exchanges with a minimum of ethic should clearly display a red warning that there is no withdrawal option when a buyer enters a market

I did notice that withdraw buttons were sometimes disabled so if I am buying a decent amount or trying to arb I will check first to see if the coin is able to withdraw. You would think they put that on the market page at least to notify you but sadly this is not how this industry operates. Gotta do your due diligence and protect yourself though.

I've been feeling it. I've deposited a lot of amounts of ethereum into the hitbtc exchange site and then i just try to buy a lot of ZRX when it alreayd listed on there and it's at the cheap price. and then after polo already announced zrx to be listed on there and then hitbtc disable the withdraw button and that's very scammy. Because the operation of the exchange site is really centralized.

Thank you very much for your advice. It seem that there are a lot of malpractices, and who is not an expert will be inevitably scammed.

Crypto world is still a far west, and probably the situation won't change in the short term.
The best we can do is to exchange information about scammers, so we can protect ourselves.

Good idea from you that you checked everything before doing it.
Withdraw is the most thing we have to make sure in the exchange before trying to make an trading account. So be aware to every exchanger specially not reputable exchanger.

I agree with you. it is sad if we want to withdraw but the button is disabled. I have this experience too but fortunately, it is not bitcoin but for another coin that is getting deleted by the exchange. but after waiting for sometimes, in the end, I can withdraw that coin and send it into another exchange. I think it is not scamming if the situations are like what I have because sometimes, the exchange needs to maintain the wallet and gets synchronized with the coin.

Is it there any scam common exchange ??

This is also what i try to do now each time i try a new exchange or just a new pair, but it makes the whole process laborious and sluggish; and in this business you need to act fast

Also, one successful withdrawal doesn't garanty that the exchange won't shut down withdrawals later on;

I've seen that happening numerous time, and i don't believe in coincidences; there are patterns, and they use "technical problems" and "maintenance" as market manipulation tools

Also, more obviously, the longer they can hold on your money, the more they can make hedging their own trades

I have even noticed a few super scammy exchanges such as Hitbtc letting small payments go through to elude the "test" withdrawals and then hold the larger sums for weeks or even months when it reaches their wallet

It is an extremely scammy industry and will be very severely looked upon in a few years for sure

It is technically not a full blown scam because they didn't outright robbed you, but don't be naive, in the end they deprived you from the use of your funds for a while to make a profit against your own interest, and that is nothing short of a fraud. On top of that, given that their books are unaudited and extremely unbalanced due to the extensive use of wash trading bots, they may profit if your holdings value goes down, because they can then purchase the missing assets at the discounted price and pocket the difference rather than using new deposits to cover your withdrawal

If they are in the banking business then they should advertise themselves as such and pay interests to their clients by the hour or day; lenders to margin account ask from 0.01% per 4 hours or 0.05% per day

If i'd been paid that much interest for all the time and money that was held against my will by these crooks, i could probably retire tomorrow

yep binance is great, atleast for now i have migrated from poloniex to binance and i'm really happy with my decision

Binance is legit so far

the only thing i really find sketchy and don't like is that they do not provide corporate informations and hide their whois which is usually a red flag / no go for me
Since they are trying to deliver a good service and become a reputable broker, and that it is common knowledge that they are based in honk kong i don't see the point of hidding their ass like a scammy panama/russian/belize off the grid underground operation

I got hacked on several exchanges and I believe on one of them it was an inside job because they made an internal transfer. I only use exchanges with 2fa now and if I have withdraw problems ever on an exchange I stop using that exchange as I lose my trust totally for that exchange. I do not trade much but when I do, I wish to be confident that I will not be affected in an adverse manner. I pay them a fee for my trading on their platform, they should be happy with that and not try to scam us!

the classic inside "hacking" scam... always a success
I have yet to discover this one

Most exchanges are scammy organizations anyway even the most "legit" ones, so the strategy would be to split our holdings into mutliple exchanges and smaller amounts so that when, and not if, we get scammed, if the exchange gets shut down by law enforcement agencies, or because of a massive bank run (because it is just a matter of time)the consequences would be minimized

I think scamming is unfortunately a usual "operating expense" in the crypto world;
you should consider x% lost annualy into scams to make sure your investment is sound

 >:(
Yes, I see this problem from 2-3 months.

Before 6-7 months theres many china exchane sites. And list many new unknown coins.
Only list, no Deposit, no Withdrow.

Afre release first Fork, then Airdrop, then ... the new exchange sites list new coins.
Strange, old known and trusted exchange sites list only 10-15%.

I work with new exhange sites with attention. Something is not good.
But time will show.

New coins, new problems !
- hard to find working qt-wallet
- if find, then hard to stat sync
- if sync, then hard to finish synd
- if finish sync, then problem to find exchange with _working_ Deposit
- if Deposit work, problem with qt-wallet. Examp: WBTC wallet on withdrow says 'The address is not BTC address.'. I only try to send my WBTC to exchange. Problem - garbage WBTC qt-wallet.

Many problems with this Forks and Airdrop.

Better is Forks and Airdrops to die. And all to be like before 7-8 months.

😊