Better do not use HitBTC exchange!

[testingtester]

About a week ago i thought to give them a try and made a little test deposit. But not even this 1st step was working out: How I learned later, the coin was "in maintenance" and "deposits offline". Still HitBTC let me deposit and not even gave a warning about the offline status.

After the coins arrived at their given address they moved them away to another address very soon. When I opened a support ticket about this issue they came back with standard text. After requesting an update some days later, they did not respond but just closed the case. I reopened another one including all the info of the original one with the request to refund my payment and still get no answer for days now.

So even if they would do the refund eventually, it is me staying with the risk as I can not sell these coins in the meantime. So I can only warn everybody to use this exchange.

[OmegaStarScream]

About a week ago i thought to give them a try and made a little test deposit. But not even this 1st step was working out: How I learned later, the coin was "in maintenance" and "deposits offline". Still HitBTC let me deposit and not even gave a warning about the offline status.

After the coins arrived at their given address they moved them away to another address very soon. When I opened a support ticket about this issue they came back with standard text. After requesting an update some days later, they did not respond but just closed the case. I reopened another one including all the info of the original one with the request to refund my payment and still get no answer for days now.

So even if they would do the refund eventually, it is me staying with the risk as I can not sell these coins in the meantime. So I can only warn everybody to use this exchange.

It's definitely their fault for not warning users but If your funds are still there (on your HitBtc balance) then this is normal (for most of exchanges actually) because you don't really control that address but If you ever decide to make a withdrawal, the funds will come from an address that you didn't deposit to. So again, If the funds are in your account, just wait until the maintenance is finished.

[testingtester]

About a week ago i thought to give them a try and made a little test deposit. But not even this 1st step was working out: How I learned later, the coin was "in maintenance" and "deposits offline". Still HitBTC let me deposit and not even gave a warning about the offline status.

After the coins arrived at their given address they moved them away to another address very soon. When I opened a support ticket about this issue they came back with standard text. After requesting an update some days later, they did not respond but just closed the case. I reopened another one including all the info of the original one with the request to refund my payment and still get no answer for days now.

So even if they would do the refund eventually, it is me staying with the risk as I can not sell these coins in the meantime. So I can only warn everybody to use this exchange.

It's definitely their fault for not warning users but If your funds are still there (on your HitBtc balance) then this is normal (for most of exchanges actually) because you don't really control that address but If you ever decide to make a withdrawal, the funds will come from an address that you didn't deposit to. So again, If the funds are in your account, just wait until the maintenance is finished.

Thanks for info! Still the problem is, that they coins are NOT at the HitBTC balance. They just transfered them to another address they own (seen by a block explorer) but did not made them available in my account. So they are locked in until they put their fingers out of their asses. And this takes now for more than a week. All in this time the value could drop and I would have to sit at the losses.

[timerland]

About a week ago i thought to give them a try and made a little test deposit. But not even this 1st step was working out: How I learned later, the coin was "in maintenance" and "deposits offline". Still HitBTC let me deposit and not even gave a warning about the offline status.

After the coins arrived at their given address they moved them away to another address very soon. When I opened a support ticket about this issue they came back with standard text. After requesting an update some days later, they did not respond but just closed the case. I reopened another one including all the info of the original one with the request to refund my payment and still get no answer for days now.

So even if they would do the refund eventually, it is me staying with the risk as I can not sell these coins in the meantime. So I can only warn everybody to use this exchange.

If a coin is in maintenance they shouldn't even let you have the deposit address. Why would they give you a deposit address if their wallet was offline? Though of course, you had some responsibility in not checking closely before you deposited as well.

Also, why were the coins moved if the wallet was supposedly "offline for maintenance"? I'm not sure about that. Also it's definitely not good the way they ignore to support messages and even close tickets without resolving them.

HitBTC has had a pretty shady past, hence its negative ratings on bitcointalk. There are people who complain of their accounts getting 'hacked' and random trades being placed constantly. Also, you can pay to get your coins listed for a certain amount of time with levels of marketing IIRC which means that they probably don't care about customer experience at all. All about getting the money from ICOs.

[testingtester]

If a coin is in maintenance they shouldn't even let you have the deposit address. Why would they give you a deposit address if their wallet was offline?

Exactly!

Though of course, you had some responsibility in not checking closely before you deposited as well.

I do not think so: Every other exchange I know just do not take coins if they KNOW that they cannot process them. As example on binance the deposit-buttons are greyed out. As a new customer to an exchange you cannot know, that they want you to visit an extra site to read out this important information. And even if you know as an experienced customer of HitBTC that you have to do this: There is no guarantie that a wallet not loses the ability to accept deposits in the time between you check and deposit or the coins arrive.

Also, why were the coins moved if the wallet was supposedly "offline for maintenance"? I'm not sure about that.

This is what I was asking me myself for a week now. So very offline the system does not seem to be.

Also it's definitely not good the way they ignore to support messages and even close tickets without resolving them.

Yep, even if there are no scam or fraud attempts behind doing such, they lose confidence and will get broke sooner or later.

HitBTC has had a pretty shady past, hence its negative ratings on bitcointalk. There are people who complain of their accounts getting 'hacked' and random trades being placed constantly. Also, you can pay to get your coins listed for a certain amount of time with levels of marketing IIRC which means that they probably don't care about customer experience at all. All about getting the money from ICOs.

Now I know this by own experience. I even think, the different cryptos should not list them at their pages as valid exchange where one can get their coins. Better to include an appropriate warning section and list HitBTC there.

[timerland]

Could you link me to where it has the wallet maintenance info?

I don't know if that's true, but if you had to check out an entirely different web page then that's absurd. I wasn't saying that you held full responsibility, I'm just saying that you could have avoided this if you looked more closely before depositing.

Regardless, they should still be able to refund you the deposit. But how long that takes you never know, it could take months before the wallet gets out of maintenance.

Any losses incurred you just have to cop it. Hopefully it's not too much.

[testingtester]

Could you link me to where it has the wallet maintenance info?

I don't know if that's true, but if you had to check out an entirely different web page then that's absurd. I wasn't saying that you held full responsibility, I'm just saying that you could have avoided this if you looked more closely before depositing.

Sure:

https://hitbtc.com/system-health

So always check this before depositing etc. Still you will not get informed by the exchange when you register an account that it works this crappy way with them.
Btw. the last column implying at some coins that there are actions taken is quite misleading: I've seen many like mine, on which labels like "investigating", "upgrading" etc. did not change for days.

Regardless, they should still be able to refund you the deposit. But how long that takes you never know, it could take months before the wallet gets out of maintenance.

Yep, this damages the image of all cryptos. So I hope, they do better in the very near future or get blacklisted by the major coins so they might vanish with their destructive business model.

Any losses incurred you just have to cop it. Hopefully it's not too much.

Thank you and no: It is not too much because I tried with a rather small amount to check if it works ok. Obviously it does not so I wanted to share this experience as a warning for others who might loose thousands this way.

[jhenfelipe]

Another possible scenario was, during the time of deposit the wallet was online that's why you were able to get the address and before your deposit arrives the wallet becomes in maintenance. I thought of this because hitbtc seems to give a note and aren't giving a deposit address when a wallet is in maintenance (see image below which I got from hitbtc):

[testingtester]

Could be or they included such a warning within the last week. Actually it wouldn't be that hard to implement as they already have the info at another site. Both scenarios would be good. Still their support and refund policies are really poor and costs the money of their customers. Maybe they change this in the near future, too. What would be another good thing. I keep the fingers croossed.

[timerland]

Could you link me to where it has the wallet maintenance info?

I don't know if that's true, but if you had to check out an entirely different web page then that's absurd. I wasn't saying that you held full responsibility, I'm just saying that you could have avoided this if you looked more closely before depositing.

Sure:

https://hitbtc.com/system-health

So always check this before depositing etc. Still you will not get informed by the exchange when you register an account that it works this crappy way with them.
Btw. the last column implying at some coins that there are actions taken is quite misleading: I've seen many like mine, on which labels like "investigating", "upgrading" etc. did not change for days.

Regardless, they should still be able to refund you the deposit. But how long that takes you never know, it could take months before the wallet gets out of maintenance.

Yep, this damages the image of all cryptos. So I hope, they do better in the very near future or get blacklisted by the major coins so they might vanish with their destructive business model.

Any losses incurred you just have to cop it. Hopefully it's not too much.

Thank you and no: It is not too much because I tried with a rather small amount to check if it works ok. Obviously it does not so I wanted to share this experience as a warning for others who might loose thousands this way.

Great to hear that you didn't risk too much, and you did take the right steps by applying caution before you actually deposited any major amounts into the exchange. That should be something that everyone does to avoid major losses.

Thanks for the link to systems health, by the way.

Another possible scenario was, during the time of deposit the wallet was online that's why you were able to get the address and before your deposit arrives the wallet becomes in maintenance. I thought of this because hitbtc seems to give a note and aren't giving a deposit address when a wallet is in maintenance (see image below which I got from hitbtc):

I agree, it could be would happened. Or as OP stated, it could be that they only added this week recently.

None of this is an excuse for ignoring support tickets, however.

[richcorner100]

Iam user of HitBTC since 2014 and so far i dont have any problem with deposit and withdrawal processing. This exchange is one of the best exchange and has high daily volume. But because this exchange is centralized exchange dont put all your money in to it, use mininum 2 different exchange to be more safe.