I'd like to cash out some coins and would like to sell them on HitBTC
Is it true it's nearly impossible to withdraw in fiat? I've read several posts about them and this seems to be the case for everyone:
They ran into banking problems and it became impossible to withdraw fiat (Euro in my case). They will then make you jump through some ridiculous "verification" loops and in the end tell you that it is impossible to withdraw fiat for some new (made up) AML regulations. But they will suggest you buy some crypto and withdraw that. and voila: you are on the high bid-side yourself.
They 'unverify' your account and say you should just buy crypto (at a huge loss). Right now I'm waiting for my account to be verified but is taking forever, I've tried contacting them on here, through e-mail, the ticket system, and even through Facebook but I haven't heard anything back as of yet
Basically I'm just wondering, are they legit?
I feared that hitbtc wouldnt die that easy. So here are my two suggestions:
1. short:
DONT.2. long:
hitbtc appeared out of nowhere with a truly incredible trading volume (take that literally).
in the beginning (2014) there were many arbitrage opportunities as the prices on hitbtc would swing +/- some % on a more or less monthly rythm. Verifying was easy and straight forward and registering bank accounts took 2 days.
Yes I made much money there. back then.
Then the first hickups started with the introduction of new "AML prerequisites" and already verified accounts of the highest tier even had to be re-verified.
I did jump through that loop. On general everything was still working.
Also the official hitbtc thread here on bitcointalk* was closed and moved to their own forum.
In the beginning it was a company in Panama City (yes Panama...) residing in a shared office building.
Then it moved to northern Europe.
(Verification documents had to be sent to the adress of a translation office in Talin (Estonia)) - They got kind of upset with me when I phoned and emailed that office about their affiliation with hitbtc...
While their "office" was located in a shared office in Norway or Denmark (not sure right now and irrelevant, because it was just a letter box anyway).
Then the second wave of re-verification started. All of my connected bank accounts were de-verified and verification was practically impossible. They actually suggested getting out by buying bitcoin and withdrawing that. In the end that is exactly what I did. I lost about 600 - 700 Euro on the way, but learned my lesson (again):
If it sounds to good to be true,
it is not true.
So, is hitbtc.com a scam?
I still dont think so, but it is not working as planned/advertised either.
The explanation is probably as simple as it is hard to fix:
Bank Account.
An exchange has by nature an extremely high in- and outflow of money (fiat that is). This produces very high costs for the bank running the account, as they themselves have to adhere to AML regulations which are becoming more strict every few months. So a customer who moves huge amounts of cash in tiny pieces (hundreds of active customers) like an exchange is simply a nuisance and a financial loss for any bank.
I do not think that hitbtc.com will ever be able to fix this, because they simply can not afford it.
They just stay afloat because the servers are still running, but that is already it.
They might feel be tempted to cover their losses (which they probably have already incurred) by scamming a few newbies** on their way out to nirvana, so:
IT´S BROKEN.
STAY AWAY.
DONT GO THERE.
TELL YOUR FRIENDS.*...It did already contain interesting questions about their trading volume and how it suddenly dropped as criticism here and probably on reddit got too loud. They also were very evasive about where their offices actually were located.
**...no offense intended. we were all newbies at some point.
