Bitcoin Forum

I attempted to withdraw a large amount from my account after I cleared the Crypto Withdrawal Authorization by depositing 10K.  It only deposited 100 dollars in my wallet.  It further said to release the rest of the money, I have to deposit 20K to "clear the blockchain channel".  This must be a scam. Please help me folks.  Thanks.

10k sats? $10k?
20k sat? $20k?

to pay 10k sat = 0.00010000 = $6.08 is about the high priotity fee amount (bitcoin network fee rate)
you mention 'channel' so i guess that first $100 was locked in 1 channel of a subnetwork

so i would imagine asking for 20k sat would be to pay a fee to close 2 channels where your rest of funds are in 2 channels
or 1x fee to close other channel and then 1x fee to get funds out of bitgo custody
(^ my assumption based on vagueness of details)

..
if however its asking you to deposit $10k  $20k.. just to play with $100. then you might have visited a phishing site.
because asking for $10k to play with just $100 would be fishy/scammy.. and then asking you to deposit $20k to release $10k does sound scammy

What is the exact website (domain) on which you have "locked" funds? How did you get to that website and where did the funds in your account come from?  This sounds exactly like a scam.  There is no such thing as a "blockchain channel" that needs clearing with new deposits. Whatever you do, DO NOT deposit any more funds to this website!

I think you can move your topic to the > Scam Accusations (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=83.0) board and submit a scam accusation report.

Given the ratings of this platform on ^{Trustpilot (https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.bitgo.com)} and the feedback of previous customers, it seems to be a scam platform. I found many people losing thousands of dollars through it. It is worth noting that a fake team runs the BitGo exchange and lacks credibility.

Avoid depositing the funds they asked you for because most unknown scam exchanges use these tactics to drain more money from the victim. Eventually, they will ban your account, and you won't be able to withdraw any deposits you made. I am sad about your loss. However, it would have been better to research before using any CEX, as many exchanges have recently appeared to deceive investors in conjunction with halving events.

What's stopping them from deducting the fees from your account balance?

On one hand, I think the 10K is more likely in USD otherwise OP wouldn't be complaining that only 100 bucks was deposited. So yeah, the classic deposit first before you can withdraw dupe scheme.

Halving moments like now are indeed an opportunity for scammers to deceive many new users and lead them to phishing websites to start draining users' money.

They even spread feeds via email, telegram and various kinds of social media so that early adopters are interested in clicking and logging in.

For truly trusted CEXs such as Binance CEX tier etc., the fees charged will take from the amount of funds available, so there is no need to prepare fees anymore because it has been deducted by the amount of funds to be taken, so there are no coins left.

But if it still requires additional fees and even requires a 2x fee for all withdrawals, be careful with the scheme.
I also don't really understand about the 10k and 20k costs that OP meant, it seems that it does need a detailed explanation.

Any platform that ask you to deposit money before you can withdraw is most likely a scam platform. I tried to check around for information about the wallet and most of the things I saw are not encouraging. If you are sure you used the right domain and not scammed through phishing, then most likely there is something not too clear with Bitgo as confirmed by many review platforms. Yous post is not actually too clear to me as I don't understand what you mean by "clear Crypto Withdrawal Authorization" and such words sounds suspicious to me. I know about 2FA and other security measures but none of them require making deposit to be able to withdraw.

I want to highlight this, yes the platform is considered a scam, based on the reviews on TrustPilot which I'm sure are all good, and how they implement the scheme deposit first or more before you can withdraw, OP should drop the question mark in his title because we have proven that Bitgo is a scam site and a platform that should be avoided

OP should still follow this format, and hide or blur the important details about the transaction

I’m familiar with this scam scheme especially from unknown user on social media that usually offer this “free money” in exchange for helping them.

I’m wondering if you deposit this 10K or someone ask for your help to withdraw their balance on this exchange by depositing the required amount to release the funds? This is a classic scam scheme. But if you honestly deposit 10K on unknown exchange without doing due diligence then most likely you got scam since no legit exchange will ask to deposit first before you can withdraw your previous deposit.

Just to be clear, you deposited $10k but only $100 was credited to your account then they (I suppose "it" refers to their customer support here) asked you to deposit $20k to credit the rest of the amount to your account?
If this is what happened then am sorry to tell you that you lost the money you sent them. It's a scam.
What the hell do they even mean by "Crypto Withdrawal Authorization" and " the blockchain channel"! Can't they, at least, be more creative and come up with more convincing excuses!

BitGo is a well-know custodian for large institutional investors. If you are familiar with Wrapped Bitcoin on altcoin blockchains, BitGo is the custodian holding billions of dollars in Bitcoin used to back this token.

Their reputation in the community has not been the greatest since they backed the Segwit2x fork. They also have some bad reviews on TrustPilot, but it’s hard to tell how reliable those are. Despite all this, I do not believe they would pull this type of scam where they ask you to deposit more money to release your funds. You might be dealing with a phishing site pretending to be BitGo.

If you could provide screenshots of emails of your interactions as well as letting us know the domains you visited and any other information, like deposit addresses, it will be helpful in determining if you are being scammed.

Any service that asks you to complete a certain amount of deposit is never a legitimate service at all, I don't even think that you should've deposited that 100 dollars in the first place, that's already a red flag that they're asking you to do and now you've made a fool of yourself for doing that and then concluding that they're a scam, next time this happens to you, if your guts says that it's a scam and it's unlikely that you're going to get something out of it, follow that gut feel and you wouldn't be losing any money and you won't be enabling scammers to do more scams.

Are you sure you did this on the original Bitgo website and not on a different domain claiming to be Bitgo!?


I too think it's pretty hard to believe Bitgo will scam this way since they are custodian services mainly.
What did the user deposit there and how?
Those Trustpilot reviews make me think there is bitgo somethingx.net domain that is pretending to be an exchange.

You need to write more information and present some evidence when you are accusing any service for being a scam.
Real Bitgo is not a scam company and they exist for years, but I wouldn't waste time sending them bitcoin and giving them control over my keys for a small percentage profit.
It's more likely that you used some phishing website and someone tricked you to send them your coins.

Without even knowing the details, it is safe to say that you are faced with scam. And if you continue to communicate with scammers, your losses will not be limited to 10 thousand.

In general, it remains a mystery to me how you can so carelessly invest your money without conducting an appropriate research.