Beware of whaleclub.co wiping your account of hard won gains

[qubitor]

Hello,

I am quite new to trading, I was lucky to be introduced by a friend of mine.
After doing extensive research I ended up choosing to work with "whaleclub.co" exchange.
Honestly even being far away with noticeable lag, I have to say their website is neat.
Dark background is the default, you have a chat box. You get deposit bonus as a welcome.
And you can also participate in affiliate program. The best part is the web API is done right.
I am a programmer myself and I can tell there is design thought behind this work.
The demo account is easy to use and the turbo system must also be fun, although I didn't try it.
You can see their design philosophy on the website, everything looks neat but they are young.

Being young means nothing is perfect yet, so I worked hard for almost a week on their platform.
Building programs to help me understand how to trade. And man did I understand how to do it right.
There are human qualities that you need to be a successful daytrader : discipline, concentration,
patience, calm and risk management. I am a fast learner at most things but especially maths and
programming. So I ended up investing 0.5 BTC to try my luck at it and learn.

I got burned at first. But then something happened. As I built up my understanding of good
trading signals with the help of my backtesting program, I tested different pairs with low
leverage and size to feel what it is to do it manually. I ended finding a good opportunity and
transformed for a short time my balance from 0.5 to 2 BTC in 3 days flat. I worked day and night
on improving my skill until they decided to do several things :

- They almost tripled the spread, which made my timed entries and exits much harder.
- They wiped my account of my gained 1.5 BTC when I tried to withdraw 1 BTC.
- They blocked me on their chat interface so I am not allowed to complain about them stealing the bitcoins.
- The support never answered for a week despite I gave them tips to improve their service.
- When I choosed URGENT level, I got answer but they act as if nothing happened
   The log of my withdrawal request never appeared on my profile. Only now does it work correctly.
   Obviously it's only 0.01 BTC so they don't need to go and steal it.
- To this day, I have no answer why they don't send notifications when they either increase the spread fee
   and when they decide to prevent you access to chat. I didn't behave incorrectly whatsoever on this chat.

So there you have it folks. If you are a bit smarter than usual and find a good opportunity, people at
"whaleclub.co" will fuck you hard in the ass even though you worked with their web interface for 20 hours a day,
4 days in a row. I needed that money to pay rent for the rest of the year. It's kind of depressing because
it's a website I really liked and wanted to say good things about it, even recommend it to others.
Now I will have to go on social media, or even make a video about what they did to me because too much
is too much. I gave so much money from my transactions already but they have to go and just steal my gainst too.

I can upload my report to show you the reality of what I am accusing them of. But I like to see your reactions first.
Thanks for reading, and be careful if you register an account with them.
The worst part of it is no communication whatsoever. Happy trading.

Regards, X

[qubitor]

Some pictures 

http://imgur.com/a/Lp0rB
The start of the opportunity
After a long silence, something happened. Maybe a lower spread, I don't know but everyone got on the train. Am I the only one punished for it ?

http://imgur.com/74ADdUO
Improving at trading
whaleclub.co website who decided to just steal the gains and erase my subsequent withdrawal from their log.

http://imgur.com/a/G7dQf
Withdrawal attempt
After I click on this button, my account gets wiped of more than 1BTC, and the withdrawal does not appear in log, nor is executed in the blockchain.

[figmentofmyass]

I got burned at first. But then something happened. As I built up my understanding of good
trading signals with the help of my backtesting program, I tested different pairs with low
leverage and size to feel what it is to do it manually. I ended finding a good opportunity and
transformed for a short time my balance from 0.5 to 2 BTC in 3 days flat. I worked day and night
on improving my skill until they decided to do several things :

- They almost tripled the spread, which made my timed entries and exits much harder.
- They wiped my account of my gained 1.5 BTC when I tried to withdraw 1 BTC.
- They blocked me on their chat interface so I am not allowed to complain about them stealing the bitcoins.
- The support never answered for a week despite I gave them tips to improve their service.
- When I choosed URGENT level, I got answer but they act as if nothing happened
   The log of my withdrawal request never appeared on my profile. Only now does it work correctly.
   Obviously it's only 0.01 BTC so they don't need to go and steal it.
- To this day, I have no answer why they don't send notifications when they either increase the spread fee
   and when they decide to prevent you access to chat. I didn't behave incorrectly whatsoever on this chat.

So there you have it folks. If you are a bit smarter than usual and find a good opportunity, people at
"whaleclub.co" will fuck you hard in the ass even though you worked with their web interface for 20 hours a day,
4 days in a row. I needed that money to pay rent for the rest of the year. It's kind of depressing because
it's a website I really liked and wanted to say good things about it, even recommend it to others.
Now I will have to go on social media, or even make a video about what they did to me because too much
is too much. I gave so much money from my transactions already but they have to go and just steal my gainst too.

thanks for posting this. over the past several months, i've seen several other reports of this, mostly on reddit. apparently their MO is to target profitable traders for punitive treatment and even voided trades. the main complaint is that people have their profits straight up taken by management, with no reasonable explanation.

their CMO comes off really shady, and always says that they can't discuss things over reddit because they could be seen as soliciting US customers and other total BS like that. i'd stay very far away from this site.

you've apparently got some skills at trading. take them to a broker/exchange that isn't a bucket shop!

[qubitor]

Hello guys, I have some more news from "whaleclub.co" 

I am learning and improving my skills everyday and because they did so many things right design-wise, I stayed a bit longer.
I made mistakes and lost 80% of my investment while terribly upset and not having learnt the value of waiting confirmation
from the market before commiting to a trade. I also learnt about several market behaviors besides the one I knew well.

Improving my backtesting code, I went on and analyzed some data. They do not offer historical OHLC so the only way is
to plug in their API and build your own bars. You do not have volume information though. Maybe it is because they are a fake
exchange, I do not know.

Yesterday I filed a bug report that their server sent a bunch of null characters after a gap, corrupting the time stamp field.
I made some suggestions in the mail and I also demanded that they treat me better, you know the usual stuff (read above).
Guess what they did ? Obviously they revoked my API keys and I get those messages now :

"No JSON object could be decoded"
"You've been blocked from making API requests"

It is only a matter of time before they forcefully close my account and steal all I have left.
But you know what, it is still the BEST beginner platform by far. It is a shame they can not handle some aspects of the
simplified interface they provide internally. That's probably why they end up seizing people accounts and banning everyone
who criticize or actually give information and useful feedback. Which is actually perplexing...
...considering their reputation by the end of this year will be tarnished greatly.

  I guess they don't care as long as they have the money BTCBTCBTC

Also I can provide a nice picture of someone doing +436% in a single trade for the lulz. 
http://imgur.com/a/cdhwo

I am not quite back to my initial investment, I consider it education money now. Gonna take a few days I guess.
Once there, I will record myself in a video. Potentially live theft of customer bitcoins.
If they do it there will be proof on YouTube. 

BONUS

Okay I can't resist. I gonna screenshot my current position. I lost 0.0300 getting stuck in a short on GOLD at the close yesterday.
Nothing between 23:00 and 00:00, then obviously there was a spike at the open. I didn't know the market was closing and reopening...
Here goes: http://imgur.com/GmFBalt
See you in a few days. Happy trading. 

[qubitor]

Even my friend suggest they might give the money back which we know they will never do.
So I forgot to thank figmentofmyass for replying to me, it was nice to have someone understand.

I also want to cross-reference the reddit thread :
https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/6dwlui/whaleclub_beware/
and some more :
http://www.forexpeacearmy.com/forex-reviews/13635/whaleclub-forex-brokers

[qubitor]

!!! UPDATE !!!

Actually they waited for me to exit the 0.0300 BTC deficit to remoke API keys.

This means I can not make any trade in the webclient either. I can only withdraw what is now left of the balance.
Less than half what I put in, not counting hours or worK...

Let's record the withdrawal on video now and see how deep evil goes there.   

[manchester93]

Improving my backtesting code, I went on and analyzed some data. They do not offer historical OHLC so the only way is
to plug in their API and build your own bars. You do not have volume information though. Maybe it is because they are a fake
exchange, I do not know.

It's because (as someone mentioned above) it is a bucket shop. There is no real volume taking place; they are not hedging against your position on a real liquidity pool or another exchange. They are just betting that most traders will lose. If they are wrong, then they just steal from the winners.

Yesterday I filed a bug report that their server sent a bunch of null characters after a gap, corrupting the time stamp field.
I made some suggestions in the mail and I also demanded that they treat me better, you know the usual stuff (read above).
Guess what they did ? Obviously they revoked my API keys and I get those messages now :

"No JSON object could be decoded"
"You've been blocked from making API requests"

Classic! These guys are a real class act.

!!! UPDATE !!!

Actually they waited for me to exit the 0.0300 BTC deficit to remoke API keys.

This means I can not make any trade in the webclient either. I can only withdraw what is now left of the balance.
Less than half what I put in, not counting hours or worK...

Let's record the withdrawal on video now and see how deep evil goes there.  

If you can get it out, consider it tuition and move on to a real exchange. I doubt they will just steal your balance openly. They steal a bit more carefully than that.

[qubitor]

Okay guys, I did a recording of this mess. I won't take action on twitter and such yet ( laziness I know  ).
But I might if I see more harm done in the future. Please spread the word and link to the video below.
Resolution got downsized, but I hope it's still readable. I just needed to save the assle of setting up media accounts.

End of the "whaleclub.co" adventure
https://streamable.com/xiyb6

Happy trading boyz 

[Thierry71]

Hello, they also removed my earnings. I developed a bot that wins a lot in Turbo trading, they did not like it, simply wiped my balance and banned me.
Here is the full story:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2288852.0

Okay guys, I did a recording of this mess. I won't take action on twitter and such yet ( laziness I know  ).
But I might if I see more harm done in the future. Please spread the word and link to the video below.
Resolution got downsized, but I hope it's still readable. I just needed to save the assle of setting up media accounts.

End of the "whaleclub.co" adventure
https://streamable.com/xiyb6

Happy trading boyz 

[bradynapier]

I have started a website to expose this behavior at https://www.whaleclub-scam.com - please help spread the word so we can get it ranking well on SEO.

In the meantime, you can see my various proof and others reports of similar behaviors as well in my forum post as well as on my reddit post:

• Forum Post:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2393215.0
• Reddit Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7cf9xm/beware_this_popular_bitcoin_trading_website_just/

[Saint-loup]

IN MY OPINION, WHALECLUB SCAMS ITS USER WITH CALLOUS DISREGARD FOR YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY. GIVEN THE FACT THAT ETHER WAS AND COULD POTENTIALLY BE WORTH $1200-1500 USD, THEY HAVE ALLEGEDLY SCAMMED ME OUT OF $1000s WITHOUT MY ETHER OPTION MOVING MORE THAT 5%. DON'T BELIEVE ME? CHECK OUT MY 8TH EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE FINALLY REPLIED TO, LAUGH AT MY PAIN, AND RUN.


(HERE IS THEIR COMPLETELY TRASH RESPONSE TO MY 8TH INQUIRY. CHECK OUT THE FIRST TRASH SENTENCE. COMPLETELY TRASH. I DON'T KNOW WHO HIRED JEFFREY SACKS. COMPLETELY TRASH EMAIL)

Josh

I have been responding to your emails, perhaps you are not getting the replies. This is called "forced liquidation". This is not something special to Whaleclub, it's just regular margin trading. It happens when your P/L and financing exceed the total balance you have in your account. So to prevent a negative balance, your positions are liquidated at market price.

More info: https://whaleclub.co/leverage.


Best regards,

Jeffrey Sacks
Customer Support, Whaleclub


(MY 8TH INQUIRY INTO THE MATTER BEFORE IT WAS RESPONDED TO ABOVE)

On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 12:20 PM, Whaleclub Support <support@whaleclub.co> wrote:
Your request (28451) has been received and is being reviewed by our support staff.
To add additional comments, you can reply to this email.
From: Josh (INFORMATION OMITTED FOR SAFETY AND PRIVACY)
Browser & OS: Chrome 65 on Mac OS X 10_13_4

8th Request - Forced Liquidation and Financing Calculation Error



(HERE IS WHERE I BEGIN MY ASTUTE MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS OF THEIR ERROR)

There is an error in the financing data given by my most recent trade (4.3955 ETH). 
I obtained this data from clicking on the dashboard on the top right of my account (please see the full list of trade shown below). 


The financing charge given by https://whalesclub.co/markets is 8% a day for ETHER/USD trades, which pertains to the trade in question (the rate given by whale.co here https://whaleclub.co/markets ), my financing charge for 3 days would be no more than 24% leaving me with a positive balance at least 3 ETH (given my margin of 4.47)



(4.47 - (4.47*.24) - (4.47*.0432) = 3.1849)



This trade was opened on March 30 and forced liquidated on April 2 (3 days) 

It reads margin at 4.47Eth and my Entry Price at 387.66 and my Leverage at 5x.

 My Close Price reads 391.01 and my P/L reads -4.32%.

This leaves my total balance at 4.27689Eth without financing charges.



With financing charges

(4.47 - (4.47*.24) - (4.47*.0432) = 3.1849)



According to your definition given in the previous email, forced liquidation occurs when my balance is not enough to cover my P/L + financing fees. According to the mathematical calculation shown including the P/L and the financing charge, my balance is largely positive and adequate to cover P/L and financing fees.

 If you could please help me, with a mathematical depiction of where I have gone wrong or how the forced liquidation was calculated, I would drop this inquiry and move on with more trades.

 If that is not possible, I would kindly appreciate a full refund.



Kind Regards,


Joshua
(INFORMATION OMITTED FOR SAFETY AND PRIVACY)



I have downloaded the full report of my trades from the top right corner of my dashboard including the trade in question which states as follows.


Market -ETH-
USD 
Direction - sell 

Size - 2.235E+19 

Margin - 4.47E+18 

Leverage - 5

Entry Price - 387.66 

Entry Date - 31/3/2018 00:05 UTC

Close Price - 391.01 

Close Date - 2/4/2018 11:00 UTC 

Close Reason - forced_liquidation

Take-Profit - 315.5 

Stop-Loss 

Return - (-1.9314E+17) 

Return (%) - (-4.32)

Liquidation Price - 449.686 

Financing - 4.3955E+18
—
Whaleclub.co

hello
What did they answer please?