Bitcoin Forum

Hi
I would like to warn you about this exchange: bitbay.
After depositing my money on their trading platform, they froze my account for no reason, they asked me for a selfie with my ID that I promptly sent to them.
After a few days they do not answer anymore and they keep my money or bitcoin without reason.
be very careful if you want to use this exchange.
You risk losing money or bitcoins and nobody answers you!!

Appreciate the warning but you should've searched before using it. There have been multiple warnings[1][2][3] about the website in the past as well.

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2078647.0
[2] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2978978.0
[3] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2249967.0

This was from bitbay FAQ:


Same case happened to someone, but in a different exchange. A friendly advice, next time you decided to sign up in an exchange (or in other sites), make sure to read the TOS or search atleast if they will require you to do KYC to use their full service before making a deposit.

Bitbay definetly is not a scam exchange. You can be sure that you will soonly see your founds. Bitbay is older than binance and for years is gaining trust. Perhaps in situation where you will firstly veryfi yourself (what is written in FAQ) your money would be avaible faster.

Dont worry. They whon't scam you.

I update you on the situation.
they answered me a few days ago telling me to wait a few more days for security reasons..
several days have passed and they continue to illegitimately keep my funds. I do not know what to think! I sent to them my hard-earned money and they think to steal it like that?
I begin to think that they have scammed me.
I keep you updated on the situation
for now I advise you to be very careful or avoid this exchange.

Be careful with new exchanges, where a lot of fraudulent things happen.
The trading floors even fabricated that the trading floor was knocked down and they took all the users' money and fled. so investing in large exchanges will be better.

You should submit photo evidence to confirm that people are real. Because your words can make Bitbay lose many investors.
I watched the brief and felt it was a good trading floor. I don't feel it's insecure!

As I said Bitbay is not a new exchange. It was made in 2014 ... Binance was made in 2017. They are boulding trust for 4 years not to loose it by scamming one person. They moved to Malta few months ago and maybe they have some problems with banking.
Im sure they wont scam you. I understand your frustration. Their behavior should be stigmatized but its more like huge mistake rather than intentional scam.

Freezing and demanding ID after depositing or requesting a crypto withdraw is a prime dick move. If that's how they operate then they should not open wallets up to people until they've fully verified themselves. Anything else smacks of questionable ethics.

I'm assuming the OP has deposited or trying to withdraw huge amount of bitcoin that might suddenly caught the exchange some red flag that's why they require KYC for the OP to submit. The funny thing is, when you deposited bitcoin to them they didn't even ask you a ID or Selfie maybe just a simple email confirmation. So yes, this is a bitch move, I haven't try Bitbay though so I can't comment about their services, but what the OP described seems very suspicious to me.

In Q&A and terms of use it is written that withdrawing is impossible without KYC. Op should read it beafore depositing founds. Again. This exchange works for 4 years. It is not shitexchange that seeing big deposit they froze it and demand for multiple things one by one just to be able to lock founds for longer period.

That's fair enough then. It would still be courteous to have a large sign for unverified users on the deposit page telling them where they stand and what they need to do to access the full functions of the exchange.

It's the number one freakout for users and it would be helpful to not have it buried in areas people never read, though of course they should.

Read what OP said,he even sent the sent the details what they asked for but still no reply means they are doing it for scamming purpose.If some site is staying too long doesn't mean they are legitimate.

Yea... They were boulding trust for 4 years to scam 1 person - thats not how exit scams looks like, its like new exchanges are scaming first user that transfered money. It is more like huge mistake rather than intentional scam. OP got all information from us. Lets w8 how it will end up. I bet he will get his money back together with apologies.

Let's consider that it's holiday season and normally, for a KYC to get approved, it takes 3-5 business days, that didn't include Holiday and weekends, maybe it just coincide that way because OP didnt state how many days ago he was told and did submit.

For the exchange, I can't talk about it much because it's new to me and I won't use that to trade high cap coins, I'd rather use the trusted ones I already knew. Maybe OP is using that exchange already for a long time and this thing happen, he won't deposit huge amount or any amount if he is not familiar with it.

Long wait sucks,you need to be in that situation to know how it feels we are not sure about we get scammed or not.Hopefully OP may not send huge amount to that exchange if his account gets verified consider himself lucky tho.

Especially if OP wanted to buy bitcoin aroud 3,2k and now he is watching how its slowly growing not beeing able to do anything because founds are locked.

It would make more sense if they disabled deposits for those who aren't verified yet, because we all know that while you should read the terms before registering, no one actually does so.

I'm using a local exchange and while I didn't read through the terms myself, the exchange didn't allow me to deposit anything until I actually went ahead and verified myself. Now that's how an exchange should be.

If you don't allow people to deposit without verification, you won't have to endlessly send emails back and forth, and thus will save every party involved a lot of time and headache.

Thanks for your warning. How can you contact the Bitbay support party or their exact twitter pages? Hopefully they will give you a reasonable answer for those actions. Maybe that's just a mistake in the management of this exchanges! Good luck !

Hi.
I update you on the situation again.
Do you know what's new?. They replied by saying that they do not make me withdraw the funds because according to them the documents I sent them have been digitally modified. This is simply ridiculous.
If this is the seriousness that is to be expected from this exchange stay away! I never thought they could get that far.
Because of them I'm risking losing over 500 euros.
I am a worker and a small investor and I have no money to waste
I made a bank transfer to them and I sent them all the required documents and now what do they want????
This whole story is simply absurd.
I think that if the situation is not resolved I see myself forced to report them to the authorities for embezzlement.

Did they give you any further instructions how to get your funds back (you did not say anything about that)? They locked them and not going to send back never or they just want you to send ID again? When i was registrating on huobi i had to send photos dozen times because their software was saying that i modified them. After talking with support they advised me to take photo again without any filters on my phone. Again fail. I take photo with another phone also without any filters and finnaly it was accaptable. Its cummon. They are not scammers. Just send them ID again - different photo (i hope you didnt modified your id in paint and send to them because i dont know what could be their next move ).

I've heard Bitbay exchange for a years almost, though I never use it before. But even is like that, in most of the exchange when you are sending any coins through deposit most mistakes were novice most often did or even an old one was that if they paste a wrong address, or if ever they froze your account, it could also that you may did a violation regarding to their rules, that's you must always double check your transaction whether you are in the process of deposit or withdrawal.

Sad to hear such update and its absurd that they do tell that thing about digitally modified.How about sending them a clear copy just to prove out? or any other documents you do have?
This is the thing i do really avoid when using up other exchange on the risk of facing problems and making alibis just to hold up your fund.

the more number of new exchanges that are currently made, and before we go in to exchange what we have to do is, we have to do research carefully, to be able to ensure that the exchange is truly safe or not for us to be able to use it, so for example we don't have the ability to ensure which exchanges have good security, we better use exchanges that are often used by many people to do their trade.

I think the BitBay exchange is not a scam, maybe you deposit using fiat and buy bitcoin without KYC, so for the sake of great exchange security it will freeze your saldo, don't panic your money can be saved after doing KYC on the BitBay crypto market.

Is this new crypto exchange? I never heard about it. To protect our fund is better use exchange that has good reputation and easy to contact their customer support. I already since 2015 in crypto trading and i use many different exchange, my recommedation is Bittrex, Poloniex, HitBTC, Binance. Gate.io, Huobi.

I never heard about them, and I don't take too serious with the small exchange since I don't have too much balance in there. If that is the case, it's better you report them to the authorities for embezzlement so they can investigate your case. More than 500 euros is not small money, and I don't know why you were trying to trade or invest on that site, there are many exchanges which bigger than that site and you should choose one or two of them to invest. Next time, better you careful to choose any exchange site and if necessary, make your account verified so you won't have any trouble in the future. My recommendation exchange site still on poloniex, bittrex, binance, and fortunately, in binance, you don't have to send any document but it's limit you withdraw in daily, and I think it's enough for you.

In accordance with AML directive and currently law, we apply special financial security measures for our users. In this case user refused to submit to the extended verification despite accepted of the platform regulations. We consider this case to be not completed and we still waiting for verification user in order to solved this problem as soon as possible.

We have to know if not all exchange  provide unverified account,  and we should looking for first about it before send money in to that exchange.  Just like in top 10 exchange only some of them that provide unverified account with unlimited withdrawal,  like Binance,  Okex, HITBTC. and for others exchanges  like Huobi,  Gate.io we should be first verified the account before use it 

I bet bitbay exchange is one of those new exchanges who came out to the crypto industry. And glad I never deposited in such new exchanges without further DYOR. As you can see, there are so many bad reviews about this exchange and the sad part is that, there are still users who were scammed because they easily trusted the said exchange.
This is a lesson for everyone that never easily trust such exchange even if they are new or even an old one.

Bitbay? I have never heard of that exchange before. And I heard that Bittrex has been doing the same thing lately. Someone told me that they requested for his selfies and ID verification and he refused to send the selfie and they have blocked his account since then. So maybe this exchange is doing the same thing, though I'm still confused since you said you sent your ID and selfie and they still blocked you. So have you tried contacting their support as to know why they have frozen your account. Maybe there might be a reason, unless they are big time scammers.

Therefore, I am always wary of new and little-known exchanges. I prefer to trade on proven exchanges because it is safe. Thank you for the warning.

Base on their trust, it really feels doubts to any crypto traders to put their money on them. They aren't resolved the issues and even answer queries, what would be the people will expecting to happen? It for sure nobody would give trust into them or they'll thinking for a scam exchange.

It is better to take the risk for old exchanges which already establish well in the market and being a reputable one. There we can assure that our funds will be safe and no worries for a scam exit. Only we need to visit the right address cause it might possible to fall into phishing sites.