Bitcoin Forum

I used FixedFloat.com (also known as ff.io) on March 26. They kept my funds, claiming it came from criminal activity, and refused to conduct the exchange or give a refund until I proved the funds were legit.

In actual fact, the crypto I sent them came from a refund from CoinGate (a legitimate crypto payment processor).

I supplied FixedFloat with the confirmation email I got from CoinGate explaining the origin of the funds, and they simply responded with this:

"If you refuse to provide data about the origin of the funds sent or provide false data, and if the data you provide confirms your connection to criminal activity, FixedFloat has the right to freeze the funds for the subsequent return of funds to the victims with the assistance of law enforcement agencies."

In other words, "we'll accuse you of crime and keep the money." Also quite funny they talk about returning funds to victims, as if.

The current situation is that they won't return my funds until CoinGate contact them. I've asked CoinGate to do so, and they said they'd look into it. Haven't heard anything since. FixedFloat is obviously a scam because they could just call CoinGate themselves and sort this out. They have my order ID and transaction hash for the refund.

I posted details of my experience on this site under the name "Fixedfloat Are Thieves":
https://www.bestchange.com/fixedfloat-exchanger.html?review=2601491

If you click "expand" at the end of the review on the above site you can see that FixedFloat replied with this:

"In addition, we would like to emphasize that we have confirmed receipt of the letter from the technical support of the CoinGate service and it is in the process of being processed by our specialists."

This is interesting, because CoinGate haven't told me anything about such a letter, and in private emails to FixedFloat they haven't mentioned it either and are still claiming to have every right to keep my funds until I can prove legitimacy.

So either they have the letter and are still keeping my funds. Or they don't have the letter and they're lying. Either way, this is not a company you want to deal with.

Can you provide screenshots of this messages and the proofs on this thread OP, it would be a big help if you do it, it's the first time that I've heard of Fixed Float so I'm not sure what's the case here. Also, would it be alright if you also explain what they do too? Regarding how to post your screenshots, just go to TalkImg(.)com and there you can upload the screenshot and then copy the code that will be provided after successfully uploading the screenshots.

So sorry for the lose and the accusations that got you into this pickle of a situation, maybe you can do something about them via legal actions, once you've threaten these groups that the law is going to be involved, they're most likely to get moving and try to resolve your issue with them, trust me, if the police are involved, most of these amateur scammers easily fold.

This is the link to the TalkImg to upload the screenshots.

They were hacked a few days after your transaction occurred and have not yet restored their service. Until they are able to start operating normally again, it might not be possible for them to finalize your swap or refund your original payment. They say that they’ve gotten a response from CoinGate. They could be lying, but I would just wait a bit longer to give them some time to bring their service back online.

So... in other words they're in contact with CoinGate to sort this out?

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They've been around for a while, with... quite a questionable reputation too. Two months ago they were hacked and lost 26 million USD (https://twitter.com/CertiKAlert/status/1759250544684585440), though what's lost is [as per their claim] their own fund and customer can rest assured that their fund are safe. They rebranded to ff[dot]io not long after.

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Wait... they got hacked again?

Yes they were hacked again for $2.8M at the end of May by the same thieves lol.

If the funds come from Coingate then they must also actively look for a solution to this problem, because this matter can ruin their reputation.
Maybe Coingate doesnt want to provide the details to you yet, so it doesnt spread to the public.

If fixedfloat still doesnt want to know about it, you can push Coingate again via email/support or bring it on their social media.
Because if the fixedfloat claim is true and they have strong evidence, Coingate should be the one who responsible in this matter, not fixedfloat.

Yes. I wonder why people still use such instant exchanges, yet there are better alternatives that won't even bother one with KYC.

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OP fixedfloat have been having quite a number of accusations lately. If you had read through even the reviews on bestchange before using them, I doubt if you would have got the guts to send any of your money there. And now you are just at their mercy.

LMAO. I initially thought you misunderstood the news you read and they were talking about that hack in February, but limiting my search result to one month behind brought the result (https://coinpedia.org/news/fixed-float-exploited-for-2-8-million-tether-freezes-hacker-addresses/).

What's wrong with them? Customers' fund or not, these hacks-in-a-row should raise enough concern of their security.

The fact that it was the same hackers makes this a lot more concerning, it's like they didn't even bother strengthening their security after they got hacked the first time. There's also the chance that this was an inside job(though I am not really sure) but who knows.

I don't see why the information provided by CoinGate on the letter they sent need this long or need these so-called specialists to be processed!
It's supposed to be a "yes or no" response: "yes it's OP's money and we initiated this transaction" or "no, we didn't".
I don't think CoinGate will or can disclose any other sensitive informationregarding one of their customers to a third party service provider such as FixedFloat.
Most likely, they are just buying time.

When hackers succeed in hacking an exchange a second time, their activity may become suspicious. Because exchanges always spend big budgets to improve their security, and here it is the opposite. Now it is difficult to say whether it is an insider job or not, because everything has resulted in such a way that even if it is an insider job, it is difficult for us to understand.

https://ff.io
The site maintenance is underway.

I once used fixedfloat and as far as I can remember they provide Letter Of Guarantee. It's best if you can provide the texts.

The service is currently not working and I think they may either rebuild the deposits and withdrawals system again or they will stop working, so you have to wait until the service works normally.
I have read in some cases that the money is returned to you unless it is clearly linked to a court case or blacklist address.


It's a little off topic but what are your recommendations for better alternatives? I have been searching for a reliable alternative for several months.

Here are the screenshots:

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2024/04/14/jTeRq.png

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2024/04/14/jTWUP.png

As for getting the police involved, they have no phone number, no address, I know they're regulated in the Seychelles but they could be located anywhere. I only used them because they have a 4.7 rating on Trustpilot, now I know why as explained in the second screenshot.

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Had no issues with changenow.io

With the recent massive "hacks" they had recently. I am guessing there is a possibility they will just shut down business unless otherwise

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It looks like you are not paying attention. Changenow has had a fair share of complaints about frozen user funds, including in this forum. Read through the feedback on Bestchange - https://www.bestchange.com/changenow-exchanger.html

If you want complete peace, stick to no KYC instant exchanges.

Karma Is a bich.
They froze the funds of their users, but then someone came, unlocked all their funds and took them.


Have you ever tried https://exch.cx/
Currently one of the best instant exchangers



Friendly advice, stay away from Changenow.
Many did not have an issue with Fixedfloat either but look now.

My memory is very vague about this matter, but I think there was a similar discussion [I'm not sure if that's a discussion that really happened and being talked about in the forum or it's just in my head] about the possibility that it's an internal hack or that they actually did it themselves.

I remember similar case with fixedfloat was posted several months ago and they claimed that coins from user was also coming from criminal activity, but this guy showed proof that coins came from Coinbase exchange.
After this I came to conclusion that if FixedFloat exchange is not a scam (this can be debated) than they are silly amateurs who don't know anything about blockchain analytics, and they are randomly confiscating coins from their customers.
Getting hacked twice in the same way makes them a big joke, and I would avoid their service at all cost.

After the crackdown of mixers it seems like there are people in the community who thought they could use exchangers like mixers.  This has led to exchangers beginning to feel the heat from regulators and they have already been cut off from use in the United States as far as I can tell.  No doubt they're being pressed further for information about transactions by law enforcement and that is the likely reason for freezing customer funds.  I'm sure they have a massive spreadsheet of blacklisted coins and are acting aggressively to stay in business.  It's a fool's errand though.  The first time someone uses an exchanger after a big hack they'll all be shut down just like mixers, which is perhaps why they are being so aggressive in the first place, to discourage that use.

FixedFloat, Sideshift, and exch are already popular among hackers trying to launder their funds. The hacked funds from the previous FixedFloat hack as well as the most recent one were transferred to exch.


Cracking down on instant exchanges won’t prevent criminal activity. Criminals will just use cross-chain bridges and DEXs more. There is already decentralized alternatives like Thorswap which will be much harder for authorities to shut down. Shapeshift saw the writing on the wall a long time ago and became decentralized.

When they've changed their domain into ff.io which is what they're using now, they should have given the notice and reasons of changing it. But then, if you're going to visit them now, they're in technical stuff and maintenance. With the date that you've used them OP, that's likely when they've experienced the 2nd hack CMIIW.

Three days has passed and is there any follow up on this one? Yeah, they could state that they're regulated in Seychelles but they could be found everywhere as the registration could only be found there but their HQ could be somewhere else.

They did explain reasons why they changed domain name, I think they posted more information about that on their twitter page after first hack happened.
However that doesn't change the fact that fixedfloat is exchange with bad reputation, louse security and they randomly asked for kyc, so maybe they pissed off some wrong people along the way.

I see thanks, I'll check that out.

I agree. And their maintenance doesn't have any duration when it's going to stop so or when they'd be back in business, I might assume that some announcement about their closure soon could be done and if that happens it won't be surprising with what they've experienced. Or if they come back in operation again, many have already lost their trust on them.

https://i.postimg.cc/T1k7hFYx/ff-error-Copy.png

As always, it is very sad to read about anybody that has lost money when they did not do anything wrong but ended up getting scammed.

Clearly FixedFloat are having serious issues (and not only that, they have been having issues for quite dome time) and maybe this is now the final nail in the FixedFloat coffin.

I think they will not be able to recover from the fallout of the alleged multiple hacks and they will have to consider whether they can continue as a viable business when they will probably never be able to win back trust.

After 7 weeks these people finally returned my funds. However, I have lost 30% because the initial swap was to exchange MATIC for USDT. In the 7 weeks they held my MATIC hostage it weakened against USD, so I now have 30% less USDT than I would have otherwise. They have refused any compensation, no apology, and still think they are in the right here. This is their response:

"Compensation in this case is not expected and is not provided. You have made a refund of the amount that you originally sent us for the order. According to the terms of the service, we have the right to suspend the exchange and request the necessary clarifying data, if we have such information from partners."

They forgot to say "we also have the right to hold your funds for 7 weeks, even though you provided all required information, and we could have just called CoinGate and sorted this out in 5 minutes."

Nobody should be using FixedFloat... They take a Freewallet-type approach of selectively confiscating user funds and only perform taint analysis after they have already moved a customer's coins to their hotwallet. The appropriate thing to do would be to return user funds they don't want to accept before moving them. But they don't do this, probably because they are trying to steal customer coins.

As was mentioned earlier in this thread, exch.cx is a good alternative. I've used them before and never had any problems with them. I also never had any problems with the backend exchangers used in the Exodus wallet (I believe it is ChangeNow), although if there's any chance your coins might be tainted, you might want to avoid them.

Anyway, at least you got something back.

I understand what you are saying but you can't expect them to send you more matic tokens or usdt instead, so be happy they even returned anything to you.
I personally would never use fixedfloat exchange for anything, especially after they had several serious hacks that resulted in losing of coins.
eXch is best alternative I know, and they wont freeze your coins, but they don't support a bunch of altcoins.

After reading the recent posts in this thread, I decided to visit their website expecting it show the error page (or for them to have permanently packed up their bags and left forever), however I was surprised to see they are still operational.

I think it is fairly obvious that any newcomers to FixedFloat that find this forum before initiating a swap will opt to give it a miss because it will not be worth them taking the risk. I feel sorry for the others that do not apply due-diligence beforehand.

I'm glad you got your coins back but FF has lost a lot of its good reputation in recent weeks, I've used them several times in the past year but for them to be hacked twice is reason enough.
thanks for updating topic.


I think that without proof of the reserves and rebranding, it is difficult to trust them, and even if you trust them, there is no guarantee that they will not be hacked again.

Glad to hear that you got your funds back, they held your funds for 7 weeks and took that long to resolve this issue. Yes your fund is down 30% because the market price of MATIC is down, so they won't give you extra MATIC because of your usd value drop, and they are right here. So at least be happy that you got your fund return, and learn from this incident so that you don't face the same problem again in the future.

This is still good news, regardless of the loss you had. In the end, you would have to be satisfied, because you still got something back. In the end, you got the amount of USDT that you initially expected when you did the exchange. I wonder how everything would look if Matic had a 50% drop.

The only good thing is knowing that FixedFloat has no intention of stealing or deceiving its users, it's a pity that their technical side is pure amateurism.


It would be idiotic if they came back and didn't do a completely new protection and correct all the flaws they had on the platform. But knowing that there were two hacks in the same place in a short period, I would not be surprised if something similar happened again.
There are certainly many better alternatives to instant exchange.

I am happy to read that your funds has been sent back when their website looks operational again. But this breaks the trust of many that have used them and at the same time, I am sad that there's no compensation for the potential loss that you've incurred over the period of 7 weeks that they've hostaged your funds. That's annoying to read them say that the compensation shouldn't be expected. Come on, that's their customer's(OPs) money and not someone that has sent them freely and should be refunded when the issue was from their end.

That particular member might have got his funds back after a seven week wait and what seems to be a 30% loss therefore he was one of the fortunate ones. Not all their users are registered members here therefore we can only guess what has happened to others that could have used FixedFlaot at the unfortunate time they decided to freeze a swap.

After the drama surrounding their multiple hacks (or alleged hacks that either did not take place or did but were inside jobs), they have zero credibility now therefore must be avoided at all costs.

I agree, he's one of the lucky members out there because we don't have data on how many other users have got their funds back or still held by FF. There are other people that might have been suffering more than OP and still in contact with them trying to discuss and ask them to refund their money.

No doubt. All of this ruckus that they've gone through, whether it's a genuine hack or not, they've just lost a lot of customers for sure and won't be going back to them anymore.