Hitbtc has a high listing fee for tokens. The team has to pay 20 btc or more to get listed! The exchange gets the money, allows trading for some time and then removes the coin. If that's what it is, I would call it a scam.
It works like this basically;
- coin pays the fee to Hitbtc.
- coin has to generate x volume per month or whatever other time frame.
- coins who can't meet the volume requirements are forced to pay a fee to keep their listing, if they refuse payment, gone they are.
I am pretty sure that all the details are communicated as clearly as they can be between the coin and Hitbtc itself. The only point of annoyance is that the users are the real victims here as always. The only way to not get sucked into these practices is to avoid using shitcoins as much as possible.