This is exactly what makes your story so hard to believe. Earlier you wrote this:
It doesn't sounds like the regular payment for this is €8k. If "it's nothing", you wouldn't talk about killing yourself over losing payment for a week.

Don't quote long posts.

So you got partially paid up front but didn't check it before you did all the work? I find this hard to believe (and incredibly dumb). Trusting an anonymous website with a large amount of money at once was dumb too. You could have made several smaller exchanges, to reduce the risk of selective scamming freezing your money.

I'm curious: on January 7 you posted about a project that started in December, and paid €8k. That's a very high payment for working on a website for maybe a week (first payment: Dec 21, second payment: Jan 2). And 365 days maintenance was also paid upfront?
I get that this story raises suspicion.

What do you mean with 30% Bitcoin transaction fees? Fees were high, but sending 0.067 or 0.138 Bitcoin with one input would have taken 0.0002 Bitcoin at most. That's 0.30%.

So this basically means criminal funds in this case have successfully been laundered, even though the victim contacted fixedfloat? This is exactly what fungibility means, and it's exactly why the whole idea of "taint" is BS.

This makes your story about earning €8k in a week even more difficult to believe.

So far for your "reputation". If your customer paid to the Bitcoin address you gave him, he's done his part. You're now showing to be an unreliable business partner by changing the deal you made after you were paid. Your customer can't help that you used someone else's address.

That's another thing: this whole "signals" business is very shady. I've seen spam for it countless times, and I bet it's abused for pump and dump schemes too.
This story smells.

The more I read about this case, the more I think there's more to it.

Which "partners"? Be specific.

In this case: if you know the funds are stolen, and you know who told you about it, have you contacted the "partner" or the victim to tell them the joyful news that you found back their stolen money?

It's in his screenshots:
842005fb2433d12308d94b0c492bd950ad0aa53ce33aa9a6ff3aa53934ec80f1 and cfcfcdfd29ccd5bb0aaf852076ab9fdd22895d9474c88f84add7f61c53866b73

Following the above transactions, it looks like you've "mixed" OPs funds with other funds and consolidated them into bc1qns9f7yfx3ry9lj6yz7c9er0vwa0ye2eklpzqfw. Aren't you concerned that those funds you deemed criminal are now in your own address, meaning anyone that receives Bitcoin from your exchange now receives some of those criminal funds? It shows once again that "taint" is only made-up BS.

That's not true. You say the funds "remain frozen", but that can't be since you've mixed them already.
The first transaction was mixed in this transaction and that same output was used to sent to another address. The second transaction was mixed in this transaction and also sent to another address. None of the funds were frozen in your wallet, you're normally using them to pay other people.
To summarize: if those funds came from criminal activity as you claim, you've now sent it to other innocent users who now own those "tainted" Bitcoins.
It sounds very much like you only care about "taint" when it's convenient for you.

You're omitting the fact that OP initiated the exchange on your website. Of course he has something to do with it.

This once again comes down to "taint" being completely arbitrary: the transactions were published in this topic. If certain addresses are "criminal", and you happen to know about it, why don't you publish a list? Who decides this? How is this verified? Do different exchanges use different lists of what they consider "tainted"?

That's a lie, as pointed out above.

Cool story. Except for the fact that you didn't freeze the coins, and sent them to other addresses (most likely owned by your other customers). How are you going to explain to them how you got those coins, if they come back to you because they are "tainted"? It seems like you're demanding much higher standards from your users than from yourself.

OP gave his customer a Bitcoin address to pay to. They paid.

And there's the problem with "taint" again: what's legal in one place, may be illegal in another. You're not even sharing which jurisdiction applies. Depending on where you are gambling or prostitution can be perfectly legal or a crime. Now who's going to judge who's "honest"?

Say what? It sounds a lot like data mining from an anonymous guy who's hiding in a tax paradise.

@fixedfloat: can you confirm the above 2 statements (mother's birth certificate and law enforcement request) are true? I'm especially curious which law enforcement agency allows you to refund stolen funds in exchange for his mother's birth certificate.

You mean the companies that sell this "service" and turned the notion of "taint" into a business model? The companies who's sole existence depends on people buying into the "Bitcoin isn't fungible" attack?

What do you mean when you say you're "partners" with "analysis services"? I can imagine you buy their "service", but if you're "partners", does that mean you provide them with data too (maybe an overview of all exchanges ever carried out on your platform)?

Great! So let me ask again: have you contacted the "partner" or the victim to tell them the joyful news that you found back their stolen money?

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@fixedfloat: please use the quote button instead of bold font inside a quote, and read the forum rules (edit your post instead of posting 4 times in a row).

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I spend quite a lot of time digging through all posts and data for this case. TL;DR: OP's story sounds shady, and fixedfloat lied about freezing OP's funds.

They stated in an earlier post they do not operate a KYC policy. If your customer is undergoing KYC with them, they will still never release the funds unless they ask you for your ID too.

What I do not understand is why would you or your customer go through a KYC procedure with an anonymous exchange that you do not even know where it is based, where their head office is located and the name of any person you can serve legal papers on? Why give them private details such as ID documents when they could easily sell them on to criminals (or use them themselves for criminal activity)?

The other question that comes to mind is the obvious one: if they claim the funds originated from criminal activity, they will never release the funds regardless of what KYC is followed. I agree, they are putting you through this to punish you for bringing their shameful conduct to our attention.

We cannot exchange or refund funds obtained through criminal means, as this may be interpreted as complicity in a crime. In order to continue the exchange or return the coins, we must make sure that the funds were received in an honest way

Were your customer willing to answer to that? Though in one side it is [IMO] very intrusive and a gross practice of violation to privacy, this might put an end to everything. From the points being asked, they seemed just trying to match the story.

First, I am quoting the OP images in order for them to be seen without going off site. Second, I thought Fixedfloat had a no KYC policy therefore what happened is a complete surprise.

Not only did they freeze your transactions they went a step further and asked you for (what they cite as) evidence that the conversation between you and your client actually took place and this is absolutely unacceptable conduct on their part. I have never heard of a situation such as that before.

I have no intention of either using their services or recommending them. They literally destroyed their reputation with their own hands over something that was not even necessary.

The simplest way to avoid similar situation to arise in the future will be to receive payments to your personal wallet. You can do whatever you want after, but the first thing that need to be done is to "secure" that payment, make sure it's in your possession and you have full access to its full amount.

As for what you can do, some might advise to raise a flag, but as they came back online yesterday, I'll try to send them a PM, inviting them here, in hope that they'll come back today or very soon and handle this situation.

OP provided enough and adequate evidence from the receiver side that he's not guilty, that's probably why they asked for other thing, to stretch this case.

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You sure such stunt that you pull won't affect your reputation much in the future? Would FF release the non-tainted fund? If they're willing to do this, I think it's a better [though you're still losing here] solution rather than forcing your first customer with that kind of "threat".

1st, what's done is done, I'm sorry that you have to go through this painful process but you have to. Next time stick to more reputable platforms.

2nd, what the actual F? They SHOULD NOT ask for Telegram conversations whatsoever, that's against the law!

3rd, a good chunk of the crypto tokens have been through darknet wallets at least once and that IS NOT a reason to freeze your money.

4th, ONLY BANKS and electronic money institutions can ask for a SoF documents, not a crypto swapping platform like FF.

5th, at screenshot number 2, they say that a refund is only possible if you can provide them with evidence...WHICH AGAIN, IS AGAINST THE LAW! Even banks will send the money back to the originating address, no questions asked, if your "evidence" does not satisfy them, SO THEY CANNOT KEEP IT FROZEN!

Now to their Terms of Service, which are as predatory as they can be:

Point 7.8 says: "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."

They do not have proof that you got these funds through illicit means, for that reason they cannot get LEA's involved, HOWEVER, if I were you I'd file a complaint with Interpol as soon as possible.

Point 7.9 says: "In some cases, when for objective reasons the User cannot provide sufficient evidence of the source of the funds received, as well as in the case of a personal acquaintance of the sender with the alleged criminal who sent the funds to the User, as an exception, the User may be asked to undergo identity verification.", this one is already labeling the sender as a criminal, for which they have absolutely no proof to do so.


Fixedfloat is scammy and scummy, as someone who has worked in the blockchain investigation field in the past, with the information you have provided, there is absolutely no reason for them to freeze your funds! I say they want to keep your money and you should fight for it.

These last two screenshots of their own statement I quoted above, I believe you take it from this thread. Here, let me give you [almost] the whole statement that depicting their stance of these kind of cases even better,


Send it to their customer service, say that it's their own statement and stance, and point it out that you met every criteria they set themselves: you received the fund honestly [through some web designing work], the source of the fund is a payment for your work, that's proven from the intensive and intrusive proof-of-convesation they asked, and that you have zero idea that the fund is being involved with a crime, given you'll quite likely not asking each of your customer something like, "is this money legal?"

Point it out to their customer service too that they probably violate their own statement of valuing confidentiality when they ask for your telegram details.

Hey buddy, First, sorry for the inconvenience that this might have put you through. Second, I must say you made the mistake of receiving a payment that's not coming from your own address directly into an exchange account. Tinted coins are real, and they are being taken seriously. We don't like it, but they have been put in place by some regulators just as an excuse to confiscate users funds for any reason they can tag to it.
 
Due to the high rate of tinted addresses and all of that, it was a very bad idea to receive the coin with a centralised exchange, especially for an amount that is above $1,000. Any exchange that is licenced and operates under any legal body always has some algorithm that helps them detect addresses that have tinted funds on them, which could be what you are facing right now.
 
Lucky for you, the exchange in question has an ANN thread here on this forum, but the bad news is the thread has been inactive for a very long time now, which means their representative hasn't come here to update it, and the representative account has not been active since last year either.
Fixedfloat ANN thread 1: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5103574.0
Fixedfloat ANN thread 2: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5119443.0
Representative profile: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2387384
 
If the email attached to the representative's account is active, sending them a personal message here on this forum referencing this thread might call to their attention if they get the mail. There is no harm in trying, but it may lead to a dead end.