[2019-05-21] You may need to provide a blood sample to withdraw btc from HitBTC

[orions.belt19]

The headline is exaggerated but it seems like its now extremely difficult for you to withdraw your Bitcoin from BTC since you'd have to provide the source of the fund's report with a description of all your actions such your purchases, exchanges, transfers etc. all with screenshots and in order. Does it seem like to be an exit scam now?

As quote from the article:

Looks like HitBTC have decided to go full scammer, and are stealing balances of users (including me). Probably a good idea to get anything you have there off, and take care not to use. They are locking accounts and making unreasonable demands for private information, which many people *can’t* provide even if they wanted to. And when you don’t / can’t comply, they just keep your Bitcoins instead of closing your account and sending them to you.

Read more about it here

[buwaytress]

Um, no, why would that be an exit scam? Withdrawals are working now.

I have to fill in almost all those exact details at most regular money transfer places I use (read as banks, Western Union, etc.). HitBTC's European so they most likely have to bend the knee to the great big EU's 5th Anti Money Laundering Directive. They got til Jan to make sure it's all fully enforced. With their relocation to UK happening just yesterday and no deal Brexit, looks like they just gotta play ball and be compliant, is all.

They probably could have handled that relocation better though. But hey, centralised exchange. What did you expect?

[1Referee]

Why do people even use this crappy exchange? It has been acting very shady for years now and people still subject themselves to these assholes?  

The main purpose behind all these silly questions and requests for more information is that they hope you get sick and tired of this nonsense and drop your account with all the coins in it. I'm certain there have been thousands of people already who just left because the little funds they had in their account wasn't worth the hassle of potentially getting them back.

They are also faking trading volume. Their reported volume in the last 24H is $1 billion. Yeah right.  

[cr1776]

The more difficult it is to exit, the more people will just stay in bitcoin. I'm all for free exchange between BTC and fiat, but the statists aren't fans of money they can't control so it will continue to be controlled and probably more so.

No doubt many of the same people complaining about the exchange rules are voting for the socialists, fascists, communists and other authoritarians.  And then complaining that when they get what they voted for.

The larger the population that doesn't need to exit bitcoin, the more valuable it will become.

[CryptoBry]

The headline is exaggerated but it seems like its now extremely difficult for you to withdraw your Bitcoin from BTC since you'd have to provide the source of the fund's report with a description of all your actions such your purchases, exchanges, transfers etc. all with screenshots and in order. Does it seem like to be an exit scam now?

And I think it can be easier for some people to just provide some blood sample so they can be able to withdraw from HitBTC. Frankly speaking, I am not a big fan of this exchange as I am aware that they are hard to deal with judging of how bad is their customer support. Since we now have better exchanges, users of HitBTC should not stick with this platform as there is now no monopoly of this industry. HitBTC can be emerging as the strictest cryptocurrency exchange that ever existed...good luck dealing with them.

[gentlemand]

They were recently asking for the passport number of the person one of their customers bought their BTC from several years ago, and it was an ATM. That pretty much says it all. I have zero idea why anyone would touch them with someone else's barge pole.

[stompix]

HitBTC's European so they most likely have to bend the knee to the great big EU's 5th Anti Money Laundering Directive. They got til Jan to make sure it's all fully enforced. With their relocation to UK happening just yesterday and no deal Brexit, looks like they just gotta play ball and be compliant, is all.

Didn't they close their office in London and moved back to Hong Kong during the bull run in 2017?
Their website currently shows an office in...Chile...wtf is with that?

I'll dig around their main topic but I'm pretty sure what is left in the EU space is an empty shell company,,,,

[coolcoinz]

I haven't seen a more ridiculous request (provided that this one is true). How would I send it to them? By mail? Normally blood samples are a biohazard and need to be well contained and disposed of. Do they even have the permits to handle them? I don't believe people will comply even if they really demand this.
As for the EU law compliance there are many other EU exchanges and none of them came up with something like that, so it's not part of the EU law or anything similar.. This must be a joke.

[BitHodler]

Keep using these scam exchanges and you are guaranteed to keep complaining. The few shitcoins they have listed aren't worth using them, especially not when there are exchanges like Binance with plenty of other shitcoins.

I'm not often someone to agree with John McAfee, but his battle against this exchange is well justified. People shouldn't put the blame on KYC/AML laws and whatnot, this exchange is selectively scamming people.

[roosbit]

Does it seem like to be an exit scam now?

Yes, this is all pointing in this direction of becoming an exit scam! if all this is true these guys just lost all their customers .

Honestly for a company that's serving people from all parts of the world guided by different beliefs and cultures this is uncalled for! BS

This proposed proof of ownership is too extreme and nobody should signup for it!

[akamit]

Why do people even use this crappy exchange? It has been acting very shady for years now and people still subject themselves to these assholes?  

You already probably know the answer. HitBTC and Yobit are the same category exchange - P&D exchange.
So some peoples stick there because they love P&D and some peoples don't have a choice because their fav coins/tokens are listed there.
They know its shady but still the greed hodls the P&D traders there. But I have sympathy for those who really don't want to trade there but have no choice.

The main purpose behind all these silly questions and requests for more information is that they hope you get sick and tired of this nonsense and drop your account with all the coins in it. I'm certain there have been thousands of people already who just left because the little funds they had in their account wasn't worth the hassle of potentially getting them back.

I do agree with you. They may have earned millions in this way.

An example, I invested about $350 in a token and got 34k token and I deposited at Hitbtc. Couldn't sell because the price dropped a lot, and after some time I forgot about the token.
So after a few months later when I checked again, the price dropped a lot more than before and I thought to withdraw to my wallet. Guess what? the transaction fee to withdraw that token was about 29k token...

How the withdrawal fee increased that much? I don't want to say anything else... 

They are also faking trading volume. Their reported volume in the last 24H is $1 billion. Yeah right.  

Now "FAKE" has a value and it's $1B...

[Naida_BR]

The headline is exaggerated but it seems like its now extremely difficult for you to withdraw your Bitcoin from BTC since you'd have to provide the source of the fund's report with a description of all your actions such your purchases, exchanges, transfers etc. all with screenshots and in order. Does it seem like to be an exit scam now?

As quote from the article:

Looks like HitBTC have decided to go full scammer, and are stealing balances of users (including me). Probably a good idea to get anything you have there off, and take care not to use. They are locking accounts and making unreasonable demands for private information, which many people *can’t* provide even if they wanted to. And when you don’t / can’t comply, they just keep your Bitcoins instead of closing your account and sending them to you.

Read more about it here

That's an interesting case but right now we can't reach any consensus about what they are trying to do with this withdrawal regulation.
Maybe they have tracked that some stolen funds are into HitBTC and they try to discourage hackers on withdrawing them? Or track them?
The results are going to be evident in some months where we will have the data of how this worked so far.

[hatshepsut93]

Why do people even use this crappy exchange? It has been acting very shady for years now and people still subject themselves to these assholes?  

The main purpose behind all these silly questions and requests for more information is that they hope you get sick and tired of this nonsense and drop your account with all the coins in it. I'm certain there have been thousands of people already who just left because the little funds they had in their account wasn't worth the hassle of potentially getting them back.

They are also faking trading volume. Their reported volume in the last 24H is $1 billion. Yeah right.  

Because it has a tom of altcoins listed, and so people like to trade with garbage coins, because they are very volatile. Also bounty hunters, ICO investors and other people who happen to get some obscure alts all need a place to dump those coins. There will always be crappy exchanges for so long as there are crappy altcoins, because more or less decent exchanges don't bother with them.

[milewilda]

I haven't seen a more ridiculous request (provided that this one is true). How would I send it to them? By mail? Normally blood samples are a biohazard and need to be well contained and disposed of. Do they even have the permits to handle them? I don't believe people will comply even if they really demand this.
As for the EU law compliance there are many other EU exchanges and none of them came up with something like that, so it's not part of the EU law or anything similar.. This must be a joke.

They are making things way more difficult so that the said user wont able to comply and locked out their funds and thats an easy way on scamming out users.
So far,i have tried on selling out some of my shitcoins for bitcoin on that exchange but i havent been requested any of these verification.
If this is true then its much better not to use this one if you dont like to regret later on.Blood sample request is total shit.

[rodel caling]

I am not a user of hitbtc, but I am concern to the users lose their bitcoin or coins using this scammers exhange, hope this scamms accusations for hitbtc are nit getting or bring bad effect to the ongoing bitcoin stability price increase.

[vit05]

Their fees are also absurdly high for withdrawals. It's been quite a few years now that it's pretty obvious that they do not have enough liquidity for all deposits. I do not remember seeing a cold wallet of them. In addition they possess an unbelievable amount of shitcoins without any liquidity.

But I do not think it's an exit scam. It's just a horrible exchange.

[Juggy777]

Why do people even use this crappy exchange? It has been acting very shady for years now and people still subject themselves to these assholes?  

The main purpose behind all these silly questions and requests for more information is that they hope you get sick and tired of this nonsense and drop your account with all the coins in it. I'm certain there have been thousands of people already who just left because the little funds they had in their account wasn't worth the hassle of potentially getting them back.

They are also faking trading volume. Their reported volume in the last 24H is $1 billion. Yeah right.  

@1Referee you just echoed my thoughts why use a centralised exchange like this and suffer, when there’re so many better wallets to hodl your coins. While I understand Hitbtc need to be compliant of EU rules, it’s clear they’re manipulating rules for their personal gains, and causing hardships to investors who wish to withdraw.

[joniboini]

I am not a user of hitbtc, but I am concern to the users lose their bitcoin or coins using this scammers exhange, hope this scamms accusations for hitbtc are nit getting or bring bad effect to the ongoing bitcoin stability price increase.

It won't' have any effect on BTC. It's a bit forced if you connect their withdrawal trouble with BTC price. Most people know that HitBTC is terrible and don't expect they'd turn great sooner or later.

But I do not think it's an exit scam. It's just a horrible exchange.

The difference is pretty thin. Even if they don't plan to exit scam, I'd say they certainly look trying to get hold of as much customer money as they could.

While I understand Hitbtc need to be compliant of EU rules, it’s clear they’re manipulating rules for their personal gains, and causing hardships to investors who wish to withdraw.

I still don't understand which rules tbh. I know several EU exchanges that require their user to do KYC but not going as far as what HitBTC does, at least for now. If all exchange went this way, that'd be a real pain in the ass.

Btw, real blood sample is fine. At least they don't ask you to give one of your eyes for verification.

[stompix]

I haven't seen a more ridiculous request (provided that this one is true). How would I send it to them? By mail? Normally blood samples are a biohazard and need to be well contained and disposed of. Do they even have the permits to handle them? I don't believe people will comply even if they really demand this.

Common, it's a figure a speech.
Although I'm willing to bet there is an ICO in the alt section claiming to solve this problem with some tokens.

Because it has a tom of altcoins listed, and so people like to trade with garbage coins, because they are very volatile.

When you said a lot of them I didn't imagine how bad that website is.
102 pairs with less than 10$ in volume, 68 pairs with 0 ZERO volume.

Their fees are also absurdly high for withdrawals.

You need an account to see those fees, what numbers are we talking about?

[hitbtc]

Security precautions taken by HitBTC in the AML/KYC process are designed to prevent international money laundering and fraudulent schemes, which is a common practice for a financial institution.
Most traders have absolutely no trouble passing the KYC once they are able to provide us with the requested data and they are always more than welcome to contact us anywhere if they have any additional questions.
We encourage our users to cooperate with our team in solving their problems by providing us with a ticket number instead of seeking outside help from people that are not affiliated with our company.