Bitcoin Forum

In an interview with Forbes magazine, Sam Bankman-Fried mentioned that there are smaller exchanges that are now secretly insolvent. He did not mention specific exchanges, however, there is someone on Twitter who said that there are rumors that Kucoin will halt withdrawals in the near future.

There was also someone else who replied that Kucoin has started implementing KYC before being approved to withdraw.

I am not very sure if this is true or fud. This is why I am asking you. I traded in Kucoin last week and I had no problems using the exchange. I deposited my cryptocoins and withdrawn my stablecoins within 1 hour.

https://i.ibb.co/wczdVFy/D404-AE61-7586-442-D-907-E-16-A0-C8-F9-DCC1.png

I am hearing rumors that KuCoin is about to halt withdrawals in the near future.

I have closed all open trades and immediately taken all money off KuCoin. From what I’ve been hearing, this ‘rumor’ will soon be a reality. Do not suffer the same fate as others who had their money stolen by irresponsible platforms.

Source https://mobile.twitter.com/buckleupbrandon/status/1542933313043693568

Well, Kucoin can be hardly called "smaller exchange" so I don't see any connections between what that FTX guy mentioned and Kucoin itself. He is generally true thoigh, a lot of crypto exchanges will disappear during bear market as God know swhat they did with deposited money (I wouldn't be surprised if they deposited client's money into Celsius and similar platforms)
 

That's always a possibility when withdrawing, especially if you are doing it with bigger amounts.


Since that source is just some random guy on Twitter is hard to say, but what he is saying about withdrawing your money from there is absolutely true, no one should hold their crypto on exchanges, including the most popular ones.

Kucoin has been known as a no-KYC exchange by many people, but not a decentralized exchange, coins can be freezed, account can be suspended or blocked, users can be enforce to provide identity documents and other information needed to complete identity verification. But, I see this to be partaining to just only one user or few users if they see the person's account to be suspicious. Any centralized exchange can do it. Nobody should be surprised if an exchange user's account is suspended one day and KYC is demanded for.

So, I do not see this as a reason Kucoin to enforce all their customers to provide KYC documents. But, we should know that centralized exchanges have full control over their users coins and funds generally, the reason we should not leave our coins on exchanges, anyone not used for active frequent trade should be moved to a noncustododial wallet.

Conclusively, anyone using a centralized exchange should always know that the exchange can at anytime freeze their funds or block their account and demand for KYC.

And who would have thought that some users confirmed on twitter that they actually withdrawb all their portfolio. Johnny Liu has denied these allegations and said that he would take serious steps against the FUD spreaders. source (https://cointelegraph.com/news/kucoin-ceo-slams-insolvency-rumors-citing-no-plan-to-halt-withdrawal)

It's a relief because I personally still have high hopes for Kucoin not to make even crazier KYC rules any time soon, I have no plans to withdraw my portfolio in this bear market.

"We will take legal action against anyone who tells other people to withdraw their coins from our exchange" doesn't exactly fill me with confidence, either in the leadership or the solvency of said exchange.

We have seen multiple crypto based companies and exchanges go bankrupt over the last couple of weeks. We have seen several more receive bailouts of hundreds of millions of dollars. We know several more exchanges are "secretly insolvent" and teetering on the brink of collapse. It is hardly FUD to suggest to people that the only safe place for their coins right now is in their own wallets. The CEO of Celsius was saying the same things about how it was all unfounded FUD shortly before they collapsed too.

Why is your portfolio on an exchange at all? The only coins which should be anywhere other than your own wallet are coins which are being actively traded.

It is difficult to classify Kucoin as a small platform and it is hard to believe that bankruptcy for this platform may take a long time (more than several days), so if there are financial problems, it will not appear in the form of preventing people from withdrawing their currencies, but rather reducing employees, increasing withdrawal and deposit fees, increasing Number of closed accounts and a long list.

We can know the source of these rumors, but prevention is better than cure, never leave your money on the platform. (deposit exchange withdrawal)

He is just trying to make better deal because he is trying to purchase other small crypto companies and expand his reach, especially after their deal with Celsius is gone bust.
I don't think this has any connection with Kucoin that is one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world, but I would still not keep any coins on Kucoin, FTX or any other centralized exchanges.
If you are not big time trader, than se exchanges only for trading, and non-custodial wallets for holding your coins.

I have even better proposition.
Pretend like you don't have any portfolio and uninstall all portfolio tracking apps, especially during bear markets, and you will sleep much better ;)

It appears this fud is spreading more widely than I have expected. In any case, it also appears that there are not many users of Kucoin in bitcointalk?

Another bad news, @samczsun has tweeted another hash of a text string or a hash of hash of a text string. Some have mentioned that this is bad news about USDC. Can anyone decode it? I have tried to do it, however, it does not work in all the websites I have tried. The last hashed text string he tweeted said 3AC is insolvent. The tweet was made 1 month before it was confirmed.



9684c022748fed2b3b076cde6000d1dc8301e508f19382e2b510f84aed260380

ddcf464e8dd47153e861530dfda82ccebc9c8c0ea86159f6d7a8a17e2916ce17

Source https://mobile.twitter.com/samczsun/status/1542968371578167296

@noorman0 said he is holding his portfolio in exchanges and for that o_e_l_e_o asked why even bother holding their portfolio in exchanges and i am surprised that people are still using exchanges to hold their funds for the long term.

Was holding stable currency in Kucoin in order to buy BTC at appropriate time and when the news started to spread i withdrew them without any issues.

I did not decode them but there is another rumor that Circle is loosing money big time because crypto companies are borrowing tons of USDC, which they cannot pay back and some of these situations were evident in the documentations when they filed for the SPAC IPO.
You cannot find USDC audit reports but claims that they are attested by Grant Thornton LLC.  :D

A lot of people (news organizations included, who should know better) give far too much weight to what random people on Twitter say, and in this case I'm not seeing any evidence that Kucoin is on the verge of insolvency.  And yes, there might be some KYC issues if the amount you want to withdraw is large--but that's included in their ToS if I'm not mistaken, so no shocker there.

I'm guessing those users just don't want to identify themselves for privacy reasons.  Surely you've noticed that most members here speak in generalities most of the time rather than telling the world outright what they're doing.  Anyway, I'd be willing to bet that if there were withdrawal issues happening with Kucoin, we'd be hearing a lot of stuff from the folks who are presently silent. 

It's happened with smaller exchanges like HitBit or HotBit (can't remember which one had frozen up), so you'd better believe there'd be loud noises and multiple threads about it if Kucoin started giving its customers withdrawal problems.

Agreed. However, after witnessing the insolvencies that has occured in the cryptospace in the last 2 weeks, it might be safer to have some awareness and withdraw our coins from centralized exchanges. I am quite certain everyone will agree with this not your keys, not your coins.

Definitely--hopefully nobody misunderstood what I wrote, which was by no means an endorsement to keep your coins on any exchange for longer than needed.  Especially not after the last few weeks that you mentioned.  At times like these when the price of bitcoin (and altcoins) has plummeted, who knows what's going to come crawling out of the woodwork as far as shady shit being done behind the scenes with even the biggest exchanges. 

It's too bad so many of those exchanges offer services that encourage people to keep their coins with them for extended periods of time, like staking, lending, and such.  I'm sure there's money to be made that way, but it's risky as all hell.

It's funny how the FUD has actually pushed KuCoin supporters to the other extreme. While the rumor was quickly brushed off as FUD by KuCoin, it isn't without basis. Even Binance once halted Bitcoin withdrawals. Coinbase did it in a different fashion. These exchanges are larger than KuCoin. And now KuCoin supporters are rallying behind their favorite exchange, discounting any insolvency issues, and even trying to be 100% certain that KuCoin will remain liquid amidst this bear market when custodial services are crumbling one after another. It seems the response is more problematic than the FUD itself.

How far-fetched is the idea that this FUD could even be coming from KuCoin itself so that by the time they finally admit to the public their insolvency they could easily point to this FUD as the real culprit?

Reminds me of
CZ threatening to sue nikkei over irresponsible journalism when he was already on the plane feeling the country.
Do Kwon calling everyone cockroaches and fud spreaders
Alex Mashinsky twisting "Don’t listen to the FUD-ers, look at the facts"

Every single time I see one of those CEO having a crisis over Twitter and shouting about FUD I have a feeling to go all in and bet they are already bankrupt.
Shouting FUD has become the last step of denial lately.

If they really have in their control all the money that people deposited then FUD can't be used as a reason to be insolvent.


To be honest, I don't think that people who are willing to hodl on exchanges need no encouragement and they would do it anyway, regardless of the APY exchanges offer which is usually not that great ( afaik 1-2). People just don't like responsibility of being your own bank.

Sam Bankman-Fried is one of the guys who would know if one exchange is insolvent or not. Imagine saving the butts of Voyager and BlockFi just to make amends with all of the crypto community. It will not be a good one if he lets it die. The insolvent exchanges probably asked for help from the FTX founder and told them that it would be hard for them and ask for help.

I'm going to be sad if that's KuCoin; I have known them for a while, but that's probably how it works, and they probably have reached max optimal loaning or something like that and made it insolvent.

its possible for Kucoin to do it for KCS holders to sell. Kucoin spreads the profit of the exchange to its KCS holder. debts could be rising if the bear market continues for another year. so maybe its time for them to spread fud so less users will share the profit.  its a way to shake off the users holding small amount of KCS.

user who could hold the bags on exchanges, should be wary already and try to withdraw after all you are holding.

It's a win-win for the exchange though. Risk their users' coins to make themselves profit, and if it all goes to shit then just declare bankruptcy and use your users' deposits to pay off your shareholders. The users however risk everything.

You can never be 100% certain that any exchange is going to remain liquid, since we can't see their books or their wallets. You are always trusting the exchange.

There were no signs from Celsius that they were going to halt withdrawals until they suddenly did. The same for Voyager. No exchange on the brink of insolvency is going to make that obvious. Just because things are running fine right now doesn't mean they will continue to be running fine next week or next month.

For what it's worth, I don't think KuCoin are about to freeze deposits like these centralized lending platforms, but I still wouldn't be storing a single satoshi on any centralized exchange right now.

Rumors are rumors until we realize its true and you can't withdraw anymore of your coins. The liquidation is contagious which these lending platforms are halting withdrawals to preserve the value of the platform. While you can still withdraw, do it because you'll never know all of a sudden the rumor is true. I'm not a Kucoin user but just to make sure my funds are safe, I withdraw mine from other exchanges. Better be safe than sorry.

This is really much advisable because exchange could turn things bad and liquidate all of their user so people should think to withdraw their funds immediately after there done buying and selling things on exchange for safety purposes. And they shouldn't worry about the fees since fund security is more important rather than taking risk to store your money on exchangers.

That's the same as other companies with inside jobs where someone(a partner/friend) hijacks their server and stole almost all Bitcoin but that truth it's an inside job.
After that, they declare bankruptcy to make benefits of insurance. So it's a win-win for them to use bankruptcy insurance to pay affected users but limited insurance coverage.

This is always happening on exchanges in every bear market and not a good idea if we stay hold coins on any centralized exchange.

I very much agree. Kucoin has become my favorite exchange after Bittrex before Bittrex became scammers similar to HitBTC. However, better to be safe and withdraw all your coins from centralized exchanges. I do not care if your exchange is the biggest and most trusted exchange similar to Binance, FTX, Coinbase or Kraken.

Since the first I was not interested in any APY on any exchange because it is an absolute offer I have to hold assets, so don't worry. Kucoin was my first global exchange and since binance KYCed I have returned to Kucoin to trade more especially on bear-sideway markets and have hardly had any withdrawal issues from the start. All my long term portfolios are BTC only and stored in non custodial wallets (bitcoiners principle).

As far as my assessment goes, Kucoin is quite reputable in the trading business. Somehow after using it for so many years I'm pretty sure that they won't suddenly activate the "freeze payment" button for all users without notifying us beforehand, this is the way their competitors did. Unless they are involved in other behind-the-scenes business like fund and loan management like the platform which recently collapsed, they should be more transparent about it.

That would depend on why you are on the exchange in the first place. If you are interested in profiting with trading, being there with the trusted exchanges is the best way because they have the most volume with trading and if you have a trading bot that could trade in all of them, even better  ;)

Been using kucoin lately but they never give any notification via push or email related to this. Maybe because i only deposit as maximum of $100 once or twice a week.

Kucoin is my only hope for a reputed exchange that dont ask kyc if this going to happen i have no choice but to give my shit to them although any suggested non-kyc exchanges are welcome to me too.

Yeah, now that I think about it I can't remember the last time I got an e-mail from Kucoin--and I seem to get them from all sorts of other exchanges and crypto-related things.  They must have a handle on the rumor mill surrounding them, and you'd think they'd want to address their customers' concerns, but I haven't heard anything from them.

I did a test withdrawal of a small amount of shitcoins from Kucoin earlier today, and it went through just fine.  I'm not sure if there's an actual problem or if people are paying way too much attention to unsubstantiated Twitter posts.

BTW, you might consider some of the instant exchanges like Changelly, ChangeNow, Flyp.me, and others.  They don't require KYC, but you're limited to trading bitcoin and altcoins with no fiat involved. 

Aren't these exchanges have totally bad reputation on this forum. Also as far as i know changelly and changenow ask kyc i just dont know how much the minimum for them to ask kyc or when they detected suspicious activity which they usually did based on some threads here.

And users of Celsius were sure they were just fine, until they froze everyone's accounts. And users of Voyager were sure they were just fine, until they suspended all withdrawals. And users of Bitstamp were sure they were just fine, until they sprang enhanced KYC on everyone and did not allow any withdrawals unless you completed it.

And so the users of the next exchange or platform to go down the tubes will be sure they are just fine, until the moment that they aren't.

Given that KuCoin ask KYC from some of their users, means you should be prepared for them to ask KYC from you at any time. The only way to be safe from KYC is to use exchanges which never ask KYC from anyone under any circumstances. See: https://kycnot.me/

Even if you were to withdraw all your coins, it doesn't really prove anything. The assets of one single user would not be enough to expose a fractional reserve system or trigger a bank run. If would make your coins exponentially safer though, having them all in your own wallet.

Could be either. As I said above, I think KuCoin are probably fine, but with the rate that other centralized platforms are declaring insolvency at the moment, is it really worth the risk to have your coins anywhere except your own wallet?

Much of those complaints might only be because of security checks by the exchange and those complaints might be very much similar to many of the accusations in the forum on gambling sites. I also reckon that many people in the forum appear to complain and accuse a service of scamming very quickly if a withdrawal is delayed a few hours or if the exchange uses their right to ask for KYC. They should be more patient.