Class action lawsuit against Cryptsy.com

[Ralyks]

I'll start out by just saying I had been a BIG supporter of cryptsy.com over the last 6 months. I feel the mistakes and errors they have made over the past 10+ days has been nothing less than unacceptable. I feel like I have been screwed countless times by them and all I've gotten in response are a handful of generic letters about how they are "so busy because of the recent mentions of cryptsy.com in the New York Times blah blah blah"... Well I'm happy for their new fund business but that doesn't help me get back the thousands of dollars I feel I have been wrong.

So in writing this post all I am looking for from the bitcointalk.org community is some feedback. Should I just let it go? Have other people had similar problems? Do we even have a chance to file a suit against them? Any/all feedback would be great.

I will write my story/rant not only to explain my situation but more so to WARN other users of the experiences I have faced in my last 2 weeks using cryptsy.com.

- 1st problem: So it started out with a problem I know a lot of people have faced: I couldn't get my coins deposited. After tying to deposit xx.x amount of Litecoins and not seeing anything after 2+ hours I go on the chatbox (this was before they removed it from the new website) and talked to Jon. He said "it will be a few more minutes, just relax". Well FOUR hours later I got my coin. When I asked why it took so long, their response? "Since you aren't a trusted user, we had to take extra security measures to make sure everything was correct. We did this for your own protection." So I have over 1000+ trades in my history and I have been on the site for over 6 months and I'm NOT a trusted user?. And somehow holding my coins for 6 hours is for my own protection? Well fine, at the end of the day - this wasn't such a big deal... No money was necessarily lost.

- 2nd problem: After missing my opportunity to pick up the coin I wanted to flip, because it took 6+ hours to get my coins, I decided to just withdraw them back to my wallet. Easier said than done!! Every time I went to the withdraw screen and entered in my Litecoins to withdraw and click submit it would then load a error type screen and the site would freeze. I tried this a few times before giving up and entering a support ticket. Again, it got resolved, time was lost but again no money was actually lost.... Once again no big deal.

- 3rd problem: <So this is when I actually start to lose money I feel I deserved>. Ok... I know some of you are going to say "you just experienced the first 2 problems, why the hell are you back using cryptsy.com again". Well, I made the mistake of giving them another chance. I had been on the site for over 6 months and knew they could have deposit/withdraw issues. The problem I am about to explain was a first for me... So last Saturday 12/2 around 2am EST some of you may have been on cryptsy and experienced the problem when there servers "crashed". At the time I had made a move into CENT/LTC coin for a pretty large position (around $5k worth) when I realized the trend had reversed and I needed to sell out. So I clicked on the market orders to fill selling out at whatever was on the books at the time. My orders went on the books and as many of you know it VERY SLOWLY got filled - all seemed right. Then all of the sudden, my coins all disappeared. About $4k worth! I started to panic and opened up a support ticket. I got the generic e-mail again and was told to just chill out everything is ok. Well I wasn't that chill about it because I was missing a lot of money. Soon after my coins disappeared I noticed all the order books got removed. This caused a lot of weird movement in all the coins (many of you may have noticed). It took over 6 hours for me to finally get my coins back and when I did, THE ORDERS HAD REVERSED. Instead of having LTC that had been sent after placing my order, I now had  CENT again. The weird part in all of this, the orders that I "filled" still showed up in my trade history (they are still there today). My filled orders had reversed 6 hours AFTER they had filled. By the time I had gotten my coins back the order books had gone upside down and my CENT coins that I now had were worth less than 50% of what they were when my orders had filled.

This is where I feel like mistakes were made. I don't know if this happened to anyone else. I don't know if its even worth trying to fight for. I'm obviously upset about it (as you can tell from the long rant here) but at the end of the day I can move on. I feel like I lost a few thousand dollars and I've pretty much accepted the fact its gone. At the end of the day I would at least like to share my story and perhaps warn other users to avoid cryptsy.com. I know I'm not the only one with problems this story of a <person who accidentally withdrew 60 BTC he didn't have> recently came out too: http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2013/12/06/withdraw-bitcoins-cryptsy-now/

If you're still with me at this point, thanks for sticking threw my entire rant! If anyone else has had similar problems; do you think we have a case for a law suit? Or are we S.O.L? I appreciate any comments/feedback.

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[420]

no suit will happen

[oxxymoronn]

no suit will happen

+1

[Ralyks]

no suit will happen

I figured... I just wanted to rant cause I'm still pissed about it =p

[NewLiberty]

no suit will happen

I figured... I just wanted to rant cause I'm still pissed about it =p

You could hire a lawyer, but that would cost more than your "pretty large position".  If you find someone that suffered a much greater loss and offer to them to be a test case for them, and if you could be able and organized, they might help you make that happen.  Its possible someone else doesn't personally feel inclined to be the professional litigant that such an effort would require.

tl;dr  no free bite at that lunch.

[Ralyks]

no suit will happen

I figured... I just wanted to rant cause I'm still pissed about it =p

You could hire a lawyer, but that would cost more than your "pretty large position".  If you find someone that suffered a much greater loss and offer to them to be a test case for them, and if you could be able and organized, they might help you make that happen.  Its possible someone else doesn't personally feel inclined to be the professional litigant that such an effort would require.

tl;dr  no free bite at that lunch.

Well thanks I got the answer from the first 2 posts... You don't "have to be a dick" about it.

[NewLiberty]

Dickery is completely not the intent.
Just pointing out you have a chance at getting your case with some legwork, and the method for doing so.

[atticamo]

"HA HA" - Nelson

There ain't never been $5000 worth of CENT - Chief Wiggum

[Facewreck]

I can't help you with the lawsuit though I've had similar issues with Cryptsy.  It's actually inspired me to try to develop an alternative to the crappy mess that's the current exchange system.

See: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=380152.msg4077736#msg4077736 if you'd like to help or are interested.

[pikeadz]

If nobody filed a lawsuit against Yifu for screwing over all those Avalon and board buying groups, there is no way people are going to sue cryptsy.  Figure out a way to resolve your problems without involving the court system.  Nobody takes empty threats seriously here, and when you don't follow through with them, you lose your credibility.

[Jcw188]

I think it would be really hard to get a lawyer who wants to have anything to do with crypto currency because let's face it, it's a new thing. And lawyers don't want to spend money and time on a case where they son have much chance of winning.

[vual]

no suit will happen

I figured... I just wanted to rant cause I'm still pissed about it =p

just get it off your chest mate , i dont think any of this is intentional, just hickups and growing pains on there behalf. Blame DogeCoin for that, i dont think they where expecting such volume hehe

[mfread]

Hmmm ... the exchange system IS a mess. And people still don't have a clue how to create informative (web) user interfaces (UI) or a decent user interface experience (UIX).

I'm not a big fan of the "teething problems" excuse either ... it just means someone released a product way before adequate testing was completed (most likely driven by greed).

In this day and age of technology you would of thought architects and programmers et al would of got their act together by now. After all many forex systems have been built before now. It's been over 3 decades since the PC and the programming industry "grew up" and gained significant experience in real-time systems.

In short there is no excuse for incompetence.

If you don't have the funds, skills and experience to create a professional working exchange then don't foist some half-baked system on us.

Also, why I'm at it, improve your communications Cryptsy. So a lousy blog (with not date/time indicators for each post) is just amateurish. And a Twitter feed with 1 Tweet every day isn't exactly insightful. Be more transparent. Communicate more frequently. Don't bullshit (people smell bs a mile away).

You'l get more understanding from people if you communicate openly and honestly.

I do wish Cryptsy every success, but until they improve by leaps and bounds, I think their service and system, well, frankly sucks because it is undependable. In my opinion there should be no room (or tolerance) for amateurs in such an important market as a financial exchange, especially if they cannot be held accountable for their operation.

[yellowbuffalo]

Cryptsy has stolen CENT coins from me so far as I can tell at this point.

They ignore all support requests for any answers what-so-ever about my CENT.

At this point I have to assume they have "stolen" them.

This is not consistent with their mission statement:
"Provide a safe environment for users to trade crypto-currencies with other users in an efficient and easy to use manner. "
(copied and pasted from this link: https://www.cryptsy.com/pages/about)

I encourage others in similar situations to submit claims to the Better Business Bureau (BBB) of South East Florida, as this is where Cryptsy is filed as a Business.

Steps:

Go to this link:
www.bbb.org/south-east-florida/

In the search box on that page:
type cryptsy where is says "Search for Businesses"

When you see the following business listing, click the button that says "File a Complaint"
Cryptsy
8656 Tourmaline Blvd
Boynton Beach, FL 33472

The next page will have a green button stating "Start your complaint"
Click the button to

Select the most appropriate category that your complaint will include - I think I chose Business's advertising - since I have found that Cryptsy is clearly not a a "safe place" and also their social media postings stating "your coins are safe with us" is bullshit.

Then continue forward and file your complaint with as much detail as possible, including dates and dollar/currency amounts, etc.

If we all file enough of these things, something has to happen to their reputation when people research whether or not they should use them. Plus Cryptsy has the option of responding to your complaint, if they disregard it, the BBB may post the results of non-response, etc... so let us know what happens and I'll do the same.

[larryduane100]

In California we can sue in Small Claims Court. If Cryptsy's owner or agent doesn't show up, the plaintiff wins. I sued a laptop battery dealer when he acted exactly as Cryptsy is acting. Easy win when the judge and I caught them lying!
Larry

[rtr4]

How is the situation with the lawsuit?
Cryptsy literally  stole my money and they support sucks and haven't been able to answer for more then 10 days. meanwhile the BTC deappriciated.

[InwardContour]

In California we can sue in Small Claims Court. If Cryptsy's owner or agent doesn't show up, the plaintiff wins. I sued a laptop battery dealer when he acted exactly as Cryptsy is acting. Easy win when the judge and I caught them lying!
Larry

There are limits as to how large of a claim you can bring to small claims court. You also had agreed to hear all disputes in a certain court when you agreed to the TOS with cryptsy

[rtr4]

The amount is not big but it will cost them more then my stolen money. They steal my money to my friends too but he is not based in US.

[antonio.hernandez]

What is happening with crypsy? Too many noise about them to be mtgox 2.0...

[ryantc]

What is happening with crypsy? Too many noise about them to be mtgox 2.0...

If you haven't noticed, it's already mtgox 2.0 CONFIRMED
they claim their btc were stolen, so basically insolvent

[shibewalk]

no suit will happen

I figured... I just wanted to rant cause I'm still pissed about it =p

you're right, totally understandable!

It is always hard though to succeed in court when it comes to trading mistakes. I had this very same problem in "conventional" markets with Futures & Options trading at PFGBest (=worst, in fact), and we also all know what happened to MF (Man Financial Group). So it is NOT a matter of that "bad-bad Bitcoin thing" but it happens in highly-regulated markets as well -- because government and authorities CANNOT and DO NOT EVEN WANT to protect you and me from losses like that (they're only interested in power games and war)...

So IMHO it will be very hard to successfully proceed with that.

[crazyearner]

Nothing will happen with this sort of thing unless many bring a lawsuit and a number of people fighting against them. Has happens many times in the past to try bring justice and nothing actually happened other than that person wasting time and money putting it together. Simple solution is to just stop using their site. I have stopped over a year ago due to many problems and got my funds out and am skeptical about the future of cryptsy. I might one day return to trading on it but their far better exchanges out their with smaller fees and much better security.

[tranzactionezlive]

I feel a good part of the people advising against legal action may be Cryptsy agents. I also feel that we must make a class action lawsuit comprised of all the people who have lost altcoins and do this without asking for any BTC or LTC, thus rendering them defenseless. Those who have lost only BTC and LTC should go about in a separate class lawsuit, unconcerning altcoins.

I also feel that for the missing altcoins penal action is required, considering that if any altcoins are missing they have been purposely stolen / embezzeled by the Cryptsy staff and owner.

[DrLove2048]

I like class action lawsuits, its easy money. Of course that's if your on the side that you recieve a random letter in the mail and you fill it out for $20

[BellaBitBit]

I feel a good part of the people advising against legal action may be Cryptsy agents. I also feel that we must make a class action lawsuit comprised of all the people who have lost altcoins and do this without asking for any BTC or LTC, thus rendering them defenseless. Those who have lost only BTC and LTC should go about in a separate class lawsuit, unconcerning altcoins.

I also feel that for the missing altcoins penal action is required, considering that if any altcoins are missing they have been purposely stolen / embezzeled by the Cryptsy staff and owner.

Not all advising against it are agents.  I think people think it will be very difficult to win this kind of lawsuit.  These kinds of things also bring the wrong kind of attention - legislators, rule makers - and also give BTC a bad name.

[crazyearner]

Feel sorry for the people with funds stuck in this looks like cryptsy going to be another MTGOX situation, filing for bankruptcy and playing the waiting game and having to give next to nothing back. Shame cryptsy has gone the way it has done could of been so much more.