Forget about exchanger search! Use BestChange!

[LoyceV]

Here's from CyberBTC:

I only checked the first one:

How exactly does this work? It looks like the claim gets cancelled the moment the exchange posts a reply, is that correct? That took first 6 and then 13 minutes only.
I'd love to see an official response on when exactly negative feedback is turned to neutral.

They're all there; Bitfinex, Bitstamp, OkCoin, Gemini, CoinBase, Binance, and so on, although not popular.

I wouldn't call it a popularity problem. My guess is people who want to use the big exchanges already know where to find them. They don't go through BestChange.

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[examplens]

They're all there; Bitfinex, Bitstamp, OkCoin, Gemini, CoinBase, Binance, and so on, although not popular.

I wouldn't call it a popularity problem. My guess is people who want to use the big exchanges already know where to find them. They don't go through BestChange.

it is not necessary to use them but it is good to have information next to and then you can compare the exchange rate from "unknown" exchangers with big players. In my experience, a big difference compared to the big players means that these exchangers haven't small or not enough volume.
it is certainly useful to have such information.

[Best_Change]

Thank you, everyone, for your questions.

Every day our moderators analyze the reviews, the fake ones are being determined using a dozen of parameters and deleted. An exchanger caught on cheating is being warned. In case of further violations, more serious sanctions come into play.

If a user leaves a claim/complaint, it is highlighted red and requires the immediate attention of an exchanger. An exchanger can neutralize a claim if it is unjust and the funds were sent to the user in full. Our FAQ says:

According to the rules of the monitoring, the user has the right to leave complaints only in cases when the exchanger has not paid the money in due time. After the full amount has been received, the complaint must be taken down (leaving the review and the comments) or completely removed from the page of the exchanger. If you only want to express your opinion on the work of the exchanger, please use the "Comment" type of review.

We would like to point out that moderators follow the disputes and demand the exchanger not to take down the claim if it is just. We can get in touch with the users, and in case unlawful actions from the exchanger are detected, we can switch if off the monitor at all until the issue is resolved.

In the new version of the monitor, not only negative and positive reviews will be shown, but also neutral ones.

[LoyceV]

After the full amount has been received, the complaint must be taken down (leaving the review and the comments) or completely removed from the page of the exchanger.

Let's suppose ExchangerE scammed me. I wanted to exchange CoinA for CoinB. I create a review:

Negative: ExchangeA never sent me CoinB after I deposited CoinA.

ExchangeA responds:

We've sent CoinB to LoyceV. Sorry for the delay.

And with this, my negative review doesn't show up anymore.

But: I never received my CoinB. Now it turns into "he said, she said". ExchangerA could even show a txid for the full amount on the CoinB chain, but I have no way to prove that address isn't mine.

Note: this works both ways too: the exchanger could be lying, but the user might also have made an illegitimate complaint.
How would this be handled?

[Best_Change]

After the full amount has been received, the complaint must be taken down (leaving the review and the comments) or completely removed from the page of the exchanger.

Let's suppose ExchangerE scammed me. I wanted to exchange CoinA for CoinB. I create a review:

Negative: ExchangeA never sent me CoinB after I deposited CoinA.

ExchangeA responds:

We've sent CoinB to LoyceV. Sorry for the delay.

And with this, my negative review doesn't show up anymore.

But: I never received my CoinB. Now it turns into "he said, she said". ExchangerA could even show a txid for the full amount on the CoinB chain, but I have no way to prove that address isn't mine.

Note: this works both ways too: the exchanger could be lying, but the user might also have made an illegitimate complaint.
How would this be handled?

The script of an exchanger fixates all the information of an exchange order, including the order number, the sender wallet, and the recipient wallet; this information is sent to the user by mail.

It is supposed that we do not have fraudulent exchangers in the listing that would want to deceive users in such a way. And if any exchanger starts acting strange, we will get to the root of the situation and switch it off in time.

[Darker45]

~snip~

Thanks for taking time to respond. LoyceV raised a legitimate concern. Mine's a bit different, just a few questions and concerns.

Do you think exchangers having control on their very own site and services' reviews is fine? Do you not find any conflict of interest in there?

Also, I am little bit concerned with this:

According to the rules of the monitoring, the user has the right to leave complaints only in cases when the exchanger has not paid the money in due time. After the full amount has been received, the complaint must be taken down (leaving the review and the comments) or completely removed from the page of the exchanger. If you only want to express your opinion on the work of the exchanger, please use the "Comment" type of review.

For me, reviews are there to show the track record of the exchanger. A bad review is a bad review and it should remain there regardless if it has already been addressed or not.

For instance, Client A raised a complaint because his funds are not yet received after a week's time. The exchanger responded and duly resolved the complaint. Case closed and complaint "completely removed from the page of the exchanger." A day later, Client B raised a similar complaint to the same exchanger. Exchanger responded, sent the funds, close the case, and completely removed the complaint from its page. While that was happening, Client C has experienced the same. Exchanger did the same thing. At the end of the day, no client was deprived of their funds. But the delays repeatedly happened.

I'm making this situational up to point out that a review should remain there whether as positive, negative, or neutral, or perhaps as a pending complaint. I guess it is a bit unfair for negative reviews to be changed to neutral or even completely removed simply because they were already addressed. A positive review, for all we know, might not anymore apply days later. Could we, then, change it to neutral as well?

Just my couple of Sats.

[dkbit98]

It's not easy to create good feedback system with real reviews, and maybe this part should be somehow improved in BestChange to avoid fake review.
If we look what is needed to write a feedback for some exchange you can see that we only need to write our name, email address, our feedback with exchange order number and IP address is recorded and made public.

What can be improved here?

First you would need to prove that you are a real human (without sending any kyc or documentations) and that you are not some bot, then you should be able to add a screenshot proof in addition to order number.
Problem is when certain exchanges (like this HitBTC example) locks your account and they don't allow you to withdraw funds for whatever reasons and there are no order numbers, but you can see issue in screenshot or in Coingecko website.
I can also write other feedback about exchange unrelated to any orders, but it can be about bad customer support, website glitches, high fees etc. and all this needs some proof.

I think this feedback submission form should be improved:

[LoyceV]

If a user leaves a claim/complaint, it is highlighted red and requires the immediate attention of an exchanger. An exchanger can neutralize a claim if it is unjust and the funds were sent to the user in full.

There's another problem with this: established exchanges, like Kraken and Binance, are left with negative feedback for years. Those guys probably don't even know BestChange exists, so they don't respond within 10 minutes like some other exchanges do.

It is supposed that we do not have fraudulent exchangers in the listing

In that case, you may want to get rid of YoBit and HitBTC.

IP address is recorded and made public.

I don't like this part at all, even though the last 256 possibilities are removed from the IP address, it shares way too much information.

[Best_Change]

Thank you, everyone, for your interest and active involvement.

According to the rules of the monitoring, the user has the right to leave complaints only in cases when the exchanger has not paid the money in due time. After the full amount has been received, the complaint must be taken down (leaving the review and the comments) or completely removed from the page of the exchanger. If you only want to express your opinion on the work of the exchanger, please use the "Comment" type of review.

For me, reviews are there to show the track record of the exchanger. A bad review is a bad review and it should remain there regardless if it has already been addressed or not.

For instance, Client A raised a complaint because his funds are not yet received after a week's time. The exchanger responded and duly resolved the complaint. Case closed and complaint "completely removed from the page of the exchanger." A day later, Client B raised a similar complaint to the same exchanger. Exchanger responded, sent the funds, close the case, and completely removed the complaint from its page. While that was happening, Client C has experienced the same. Exchanger did the same thing. At the end of the day, no client was deprived of their funds. But the delays repeatedly happened.

You misinterpret our rule. The complaints are removed only in exceptional cases. Our FAQ addresses this as well:

Why was my review deleted:
Administration of monitoring has the right to delete reviews that:
·        duplicate the user's other review;
·        contain profanities, insults and other information humiliating human dignity;
·        contain calls for war, separatism, racism, class or ethnic animosity and/or information about that;
·        contain information about usage of alcoholic, drug, or pharmacological substances or tobacco smoking;
·        contain false information or user's untrue speculations;
·        contain advertising materials;
·        are written by the user with a view or receiving financial or other benefit.

In all other cases, after the situation with the user is solved, the claim is switched to a neutral review and remains on the page of the exchanger, where it is available for reading by other users.
We would like to stress again that the new version of the monitor will show an amount of neutral reviews on top of positive and negative ones.

It's not easy to create good feedback system with real reviews, and maybe this part should be somehow improved in BestChange to avoid fake review.
If we look what is needed to write a feedback for some exchange you can see that we only need to write our name, email address, our feedback with exchange order number and IP address is recorded and made public.

What can be improved here?

First you would need to prove that you are a real human (without sending any kyc or documentations) and that you are not some bot, then you should be able to add a screenshot proof in addition to order number.
Problem is when certain exchanges (like this HitBTC example) locks your account and they don't allow you to withdraw funds for whatever reasons and there are no order numbers, but you can see issue in screenshot or in Coingecko website.
I can also write other feedback about exchange unrelated to any orders, but it can be about bad customer support, website glitches, high fees etc. and all this needs some proof.

I think this feedback submission form should be improved:

We strive to keep the balance between the ease of filling in the form and sifting away the false information. If we make the form for reviews more elaborate, we would only push away the real users; at the same time for the users fulfilling review orders, this elaboration will not produce any effect. However, we trace dozens of other parameters that are not publicly available, allowing us to distinguish genuine reviews from ordered ones and delete all suspicious comments.

There's another problem with this: established exchanges, like Kraken and Binance, are left with negative feedback for years. Those guys probably don't even know BestChange exists, so they don't respond within 10 minutes like some other exchanges do.

It is supposed that we do not have fraudulent exchangers in the listing

In that case, you may want to get rid of YoBit and HitBTC.

We do not have partnership relations with exchanges. The infrmation on their pages states the following:

Please note that all the crypto markets are presented for rates information only. We do not recommend any of the markets in the rating for any kind of exchange. They are presented in a separate section only for comparing current exchange prices. Unlike of exchangers services we do not have partnership agreements with the markets and all the feedback on our website is for users and information needs.


Example: https://www.bestchange.com/hitbtc-exchanger.html

IP address is recorded and made public.

I don't like this part at all, even though the last 256 possibilities are removed from the IP address, it shares way too much information.

We publish only a part of IP-address which is impossible to be used to identify the users. We keep this information to prevent the system's abuse and provide the maximally fair service with genuine reviews.

[examplens]

Here is again new 2,000,000 satoshis in a giveaway on the BestChange Facebook page
I think you can also add this to the games and round section. btw. Facebook only again?

..There will be TEN WINNERS. A participant must as precisely as possible guess the exchange rate of Bitcoin to USDT at the binance.com exchange at 10:00:00 UTC on Tuesday, May, 11, 2021.

https://www.facebook.com/bestchange/posts/1698232273714887

[Darker45]

Here is again new 2,000,000 satoshis in a giveaway on the BestChange Facebook page
I think you can also add this to the games and round section. btw. Facebook only again?

This is exciting, but since I am not really into Facebook, I am supporting your suggestion that the same could be added in the games and rounds section, especially now that the old mic, El duderino_, is not anymore hosting a Bitcoin price prediction contest.

But since the management could have thought that the brand is already sufficiently promoted on this forum, why not include Twitter, then?

[examplens]

But since the management could have thought that the brand is already sufficiently promoted on this forum, why not include Twitter, then?

I remember when BestChange started with the campaign here on Bitcointalk, they also run Twitter campaign but stopped it after the first few weeks. as far as I understood it was because the TW campaign was not giving good enough results.

[Best_Change]

Thank you, everyone, for your input.

We will think about an option of contests on Bitcointalk. Follow our Twitter, we are about to launch a contest there too soon, if you are not into Facebook.

[Bitcoin_Arena]

Been checking out the site under the crypto exchange balance section and notices that Livecoin USD and Livecoin RUB are still listed there. Unfortunately, Livecoin exchange was hacked and they have never been able to recover from the incident.

The official domain is suspended as we speak -  www.livecoin.net

I think some update needs to be done regarding the Livecoin currencies or pairs.

[examplens]

I often follow price movements on BestChange, for example, Bitcoin to Perfect Money USD pair. it’s interesting to me and I still can’t understand how most of these exchangers operate.
For example, at the moment current BTC/USD price is $40300 (by Bitstamp). But I find there few exchangers offering $40680 and up to $40830. so that's a lot more than the current price. What’s the point here and how it fits into the business of buying something above regular cost.

btw. At the same time, few of them offering "just" $34280 and up. why the difference is so great, do they have their clients at all? Who selling Bitcoin on the -20% of the regular price?
what I missed?

[Bitcoin_Arena]

I often follow price movements on BestChange, for example, Bitcoin to Perfect Money USD pair. it’s interesting to me and I still can’t understand how most of these exchangers operate.
For example, at the moment current BTC/USD price is $40300 (by Bitstamp). But I find there few exchangers offering $40680 and up to $40830. so that's a lot more than the current price. What’s the point here and how it fits into the business of buying something above regular cost.

btw. At the same time, few of them offering "just" $34280 and up. why the difference is so great, do they have their clients at all? Who selling Bitcoin on the -20% of the regular price?
what I missed?

They make money from other pair perhaps?

I think there's something about Perfect Money. I have never used the payment method but PM USD rate seems to be different from other payment methods in the same exchanges.

For example newline.online exchange whose BTC to PM USD rate is around 40,871 is having a very low rate of BTC to USDT at 34,931.71

Maybe one of the reasons could be that, it's hard to cash out Perfect Money USD back to BTC because the other direction of PM USD to BTC is even higher at 41,850

[examplens]

They make money from other pair perhaps?

I think there's something about Perfect Money. I have never used the payment method but PM USD rate seems to be different from other payment methods in the same exchanges.

For example newline.online exchange whose BTC to PM USD rate is around 40,871 is having a very low rate of BTC to USDT at 34,931.71

Maybe one of the reasons could be that, it's hard to cash out Perfect Money USD back to BTC because the other direction of PM USD to BTC is even higher at 41,850

Possible, if you check statistic on BestChange, Perfect Money is most popular in exchange. Watch the top ten, six of them are some pair with PM.



So, many exchangers keep other pairs just to keep their page from looking blank, and they were based on a few specific pairs

[Best_Change]

Been checking out the site under the crypto exchange balance section and notices that Livecoin USD and Livecoin RUB are still listed there. Unfortunately, Livecoin exchange was hacked and they have never been able to recover from the incident.

The official domain is suspended as we speak -  www.livecoin.net

I think some update needs to be done regarding the Livecoin currencies or pairs.

We have removed Livecoin, thank you!

[Best_Change]

On the night between 4 to 5 June, according to preliminary information, the exchanger bithub.im was hacked. During several night hours, fraudsters managed to get an equivalent of 70,000 USD. The threat actors acted thoughtfully and carefully, without revealing in any way the fact of interception of control of the service, thus bypassing the automatic protection systems of monitoring and the protocols of the moderators' actions.

As Sarkis Darbinyan, managing partner of the law firm Digital Rights Center, which represents the interests of the exchanger, comments on the situation:

“On the night of June 5, 2021, from 00:00 to 08:00, as a result of malicious actions by unknown persons, access to the management of the bithub.im service was illegally obtained. The cybercriminals bypassed all means of protection and notifications about security breaches, both from the side of the service and from the side of users. They were able, among other things, to disable the notifications of exchange requests sent to the exchanger administrator via Telegram, as well as completely delete all information about all exchange requests received during the above period. The bithub.im administration was forced to turn off the service at 07:00 on June 5, 2021, and immediately notify the representatives of the monitoring.”

We received the first letter from the administration of the exchanger about the hack of their resource already at 7:09, after which their account on the monitor was immediately suspended from the listing to prevent worsening of the situation.

Afterwards, the representatives of the exchanger placed their message on different resources, having confirmed the fact of the hacking.

“Any statements, guarantees, promises, commercial proposals, as well as any information that you could have received by sending requests to bithub.im between 00.00 and 08.00 on June 5, 2021, were provided by persons who have absolutely nothing to do with the bithub.im administration. <...> If you sent funds for the exchange through the bithub.im service during this period of time, these funds were received not by the administration of the service, but by attackers," the service representatives noted.

Soon after the incident, the administration of the monitor advised the administrator of the bithub service to contact law-enforcing authorities for the prompt investigation of the incident. Meanwhile, our moderators together with lawyers and the administrator of the hacked services launched their own independent investigation.

Later we received confirmation from the legal firm that with their help an application was drawn up to the police with a requirement to initiate an investigation of the incident and it has already been registered with the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

“The administration of the bithub.im service turned to the law firm Digital Rights Center (DRC) for professional assistance in connection with the incident. At the moment, we have submitted an application, which is registered in the register of reports of crimes (KUSP), a pre-investigation check is being conducted on it. Acts committed by unidentified persons or a group of persons may fall under the signs of corpus delicti under Art. 272 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Illegal access to computer information), art. 273 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Creation, use and distribution of malicious computer programs), as well as Art. 159.6 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (Fraud in the field of computer information), ” Sarkis Darbinyan comments on the situation. “Recently, the number of such cases has become much more frequent. Therefore, it is especially important to report such incidents. Of course, law enforcement agencies are not very good at investigating such cases. Therefore, we are now helping them in every possible way and collecting evidence that will help to catch and punish the attacker.”

Despite that we are not to blame for what has happened with the exchanger, and also the fact that legally we are not bound for such cases, we could not leave our users in trouble, who trusted our service for many years, therefore, from the first hours after the incident, we began to negotiate on behalf of the victims with all parties to the conflict

During investigation, we found possible bottlenecks in the security of the hosting and the hacked service. Based on the received data, mechanisms of check for suspicions operations were improved, as well as abnormal behaviour for exchangers with non-round-the-clock service. Recommendations for other exchangers were developed, and their owners were informed about the imperfection of the security system of the hosting center of the reg.ru service.

As of now, both investigations are not completed yet, however on the 5 August 2021, with the assistance of the investors who wish to stay anonymous, we initiated the first wave of payouts. The administrator of the exchanger returned users funds which were lost due to the incident. In the first queue, there were those victims who provided complete irrefutable information about their losses. As of now, 28,700 USD has been paid out which is about half of the total amount of damage (according to preliminary data).

We would like to thank everyone who assisted in the investigation and provided us with full information, thanks to which we managed to solve this issue faster than we thought we would.

Both the administration of the exchanger and we received a large number of requests with information about unpaid orders. Unfortunately, a portion of these requests has false information, which has significantly complicated the analysis.

In the second queue of payouts, there are users that have not provided all the necessary evidence, but who do not raise serious suspicion. However. due to the fact that among those affected there were unscrupulous users who, during the incident, claimed unreasonable payments from the exchange office, solving the problem in relation to them will take more time.

Despite the partial payouts, we still face a colossal volume of work to eradicate consequences and establishing all the circumstances of the hack. The investigations are ongoing, we need more information to objectively evaluate the responsibilities of all the sides to the incident. We also hope that law=enforcement authorities will manage to identify scammers and catch them.

From our side, we would like to thank all the victims for their patience and understanding. We are glad that the majority of the victims managed to receive the funds lost as a result of the hack of the exchanger, the rest will also receive them. Our special thanks go to the lawyers of the Digital Rights Center, and specifically Sarkis Darbinyan, as their firm is working as a mediator in this complicated situation, as well as provides necessary legal consultations connected with the ongoing investigation.

[examplens]

bump this thread. it is interesting that there is not much discussion here.
Can I understand that everything works well here, so there are not many remarks, suggestions or ambiguities?
However, the platform makes it easy to track values and currency conversions, it deserves to be strengthened.