[2019-06-27]Millions of investors can't sell their bitcoins

[bomj]

Millions of 'armchair' investors piled into Bitcoin – now they can't sell



Those who own digital currencies like Bitcoin worth less than £100 may be stuck with their investments
due to minimum limits for selling introduced by wallet providers.
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One Telegraph Money reader who purchased around £90 worth of Bitcoin at the height of the craze was surprised to find he did not own enough of the digital coin to be able to sell through his provider Blockchain.com.

He purchased 0.0062 of a coin, but quickly found he needed around 0.008 of a coin in order to sell. When he checked again this week the minimum amount had risen to 0.01.
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Gary McFarlane, a crypto analyst at Interactive Investor, the stockbrokers, said Blockchain.com's minimum was far above the average transaction fee of $2.31 (£1.82). He said many of those who purchased cryptocurrencies would have been doing so speculatively and would own small amounts.

According to analysis by Interactive Investor, almost 18 million wallets currently hold less Bitcoin than Blockchain.com’s limit. A single person can own multiple wallets.

Mr McFarlane said: “Although individuals holding their Bitcoin in exchange wallets still own the holdings, they effectively can’t access it with these rules. Worse still, the exchange could be using those funds for liquidity on the exchange – such is the crypto wild west.”
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[CryptoBry]

I am not surprised of this minimum rule imposed by many cryptocurrency wallets. I am not sure though if top and famous exchanges like Binance and Kucoin have the same rule or if the minimum is the same. Maybe it is time to petition Blockchain.com to do something about this limitation so that people will not feel stuck with their coins and could not do anything about it. Actually, this opens up a good opportunity for other service providers to work with this market category offering them better alternatives. In my view, part of the ways we can encourage massive adoption is we relax limitations resulting into empowered members of the cryptocurrency community.

[elda34b]

They can still sell them via OTC if they wanted to. But probably only for BTC <> Alts, and not BTC <> Fiat because the buyer might not want to have additional fees (even if it's possible that the seller sends more BTC to cover the fees).

[slaman29]

Strange that all these news came around, even I was around on every day for this month (usually I am not), trading for fun on a small amount but none of my trades were blocked or cancelled. To be sure I only had in total 300k satoshi and I only do BTC=Alt Trades, but that is still about 30+ dollars and it's small enough to be counted as a small trade, so how come I didn't get affected?

[hatshepsut93]

The title doesn't sound correct, it is estimated that there's around 35 million users of exchanges, and most investors have more than 0.01 BTC are whatever is the limit, and not all exchanges have such high minimal withdrawal thresholds, so the number of affected investors should be much lower, maybe a few hundreds of thousands in worst case. And of course "can't sell" is also not correct, people always can make direct trades, or use currency converter services instead of the markets.

[Kakmakr]

The article specifically mentions Blockchain.com and as far as I know, Blockchain.com partnered with SFOX to offer "Sell" options to US customers only, so this might only affect US customers that wants to sell bitcoins directly via the Blockchain.com platform. You always have the option to send the bitcoins to other exchanges with a much lower withdrawal limit, if you do not want to use SFOX. 

In any way, Blockchain.com are sucking up to regulators lately and it has become less attractive as a wallet provider, since it's early days as a anonymous wallet provider. <I see a "Circle" business model happening soon with them too> 

[roosbit]

Honestly I don't have a problem with this because all exchanges have a minimum in place and blockchain.com is no exception and AFAIK this crypto to USD is an expensive process to trade below a certain threshold but less than £100 is extravagant they should reduce this to $50 equivalent.

Strange that all these news came around, even I was around on every day for this month (usually I am not), trading for fun on a small amount but none of my trades were blocked or cancelled. To be sure I only had in total 300k satoshi and I only do BTC=Alt Trades, but that is still about 30+ dollars and it's small enough to be counted as a small trade, so how come I didn't get affected?

You didn't get affected because you are not trading from blockchain.com

[NeuroticFish]

So there's one exchange with bad habits and somebody makes a news about it like it would be generalized problem.
Well, if Telegraph wants to ask money from us to access their news, at least hire reporters that know what they talk about.

There are exchanges where the minimum amount is much lower. Bitstamp advertises 5 EUR / 5 USD / 0.001 BTC, but I didn't try that myself.
So those "millions of users" will have to find the best moment to transfer their money away at not-too-big fees then sell at another exchange. Or wait until their Satoshi will worth much more.

[BitHodler]

Too bad sites such as blockchain.com still attract so many newbies. Their SEO makes them pop up always in the top 3 sites when searching on Google for Bitcoin wallet.

What do you think people will complain about expensive transactions? That's Bitcoin. Newbies don't know that blockchain.com purposely makes people pay that much because they don't want to upgrade to SegWit.

It wouldn't even surprise me if blockchain.com is doing this to boost their income just like BitPay is doing it when charging extra for payments. Roger Ver has a major stake in both of these companies....

[figmentofmyass]

Millions of 'armchair' investors piled into Bitcoin – now they can't sell

sure they can. they can sell the coins p2p or send them to any number of exchanges that don't enforce such a high minimum. what a dumb article. the world doesn't revolve around blockchain.com.

[malevolent]

They can't sell because they are uninformed thinking there's only one place they can sell their coins at, and with the cost of KYC it might not be worth it to service transactions below a certain (increasingly higher) threshold.

[DaCryptoRaccoon]

It should also be a call to make and set fees to stop miners bumping the fees when we see price rally's
You raise a valid point if bitcoin is to be used by everyone all the time there needs to be more push to make it a fair system that is not penalized by the ecosystem.

[carlfebz2]

The title doesn't sound correct, it is estimated that there's around 35 million users of exchanges, and most investors have more than 0.01 BTC are whatever is the limit, and not all exchanges have such high minimal withdrawal thresholds, so the number of affected investors should be much lower, maybe a few hundreds of thousands in worst case. And of course "can't sell" is also not correct, people always can make direct trades, or use currency converter services instead of the markets.

A few hundreds of thousands of people cant able to sell up is somewhat too much for us to view on.The topic title is somehow misleading actually yet this do pertains as a whole without even thinking that they can convert out on other alts which would solve out the problem and heck most exchangers do have the same low minimal amount withdrawal.

[Ozero]

Such restrictions in any case adversely affect the implementation of cryptocurrency in our lives. However, I think that a solution will be found in the future in any case. You can import the secret key into other wallets, where you can exchange for another cryptocurrency or fiat.
Of course, such cases will help people stop using Bitcoin and switch to using another cryptocurrency.

[cr1776]

Perhaps they should consider NOT selling?   Perhaps they should hold the coins, or just use the coins to purchase something.   

Nonsense, fake news headline.

[1Referee]

Also, i'm sure there are many inactive Blockchain.com wallet (either because the owner forget it, forget password or moved to another wallet), which makes statement "Millions of investors" is inaccurate.

News outlets don't care. They just pick the data as a large number and create a sensational article around it.

Most people using blockchain.com don't do that to buy or sell coins, just to use them as a wallet service. From there they send their coins to Binance or whatever other exchange to trade or sell. No one in his right mind will be using blockchain.com to sell coins. People care about every penny so they will send it to other exchanges if they have the intention to sell them to fiat.

Nowadays blockchain.com is a redundant service. Switch to Electrum or Green Wallet. Much better alternatives and both native Segwit ready.

[rodel caling]

I am not surprised of this minimum rule imposed by many cryptocurrency wallets. I am not sure though if top and famous exchanges like Binance and Kucoin have the same rule or if the minimum is the same. Maybe it is time to petition Blockchain.com to do something about this limitation so that people will not feel stuck with their coins and could not do anything about it. Actually, this opens up a good opportunity for other service providers to work with this market category offering them better alternatives. In my view, part of the ways we can encourage massive adoption is we relax limitations resulting into empowered members of the cryptocurrency community.

That's rules are not fair for us specially for those people holding small amount of bitcoin in the exchange, withdrawal small amount of bitcoin because sometimes he it to small small amount because of emergency need to their personal needs. But if not wrong mans exchange have an withdrawal limitation for those people want to withdraw huge volume amount of bitcoinis that fair for us to avoiding laundering.

[Vishnu.Reang]

They are referring to Blockchain.com? Then I don't think that this news is accurate. I have been using Blockchain.com wallet for more than 3 years, and I have transferred as low as BTC0.001 using this wallet. I never faced any problem with the minimum threshold. May be they are talking about some other online Bitcoin wallet provider.

[bbc.reporter]

The title doesn't sound correct, it is estimated that there's around 35 million users of exchanges, and most investors have more than 0.01 BTC are whatever is the limit, and not all exchanges have such high minimal withdrawal thresholds, so the number of affected investors should be much lower, maybe a few hundreds of thousands in worst case. And of course "can't sell" is also not correct, people always can make direct trades, or use currency converter services instead of the markets.

That is clickbait with some fud mixed in the article to scare the common people at the bottom, the people who need bitcoin the most, from buying and using it.

[bomj]

The title doesn't sound correct, it is estimated that there's around 35 million users of exchanges, and most investors have more than 0.01 BTC are whatever is the limit, and not all exchanges have such high minimal withdrawal thresholds, so the number of affected investors should be much lower, maybe a few hundreds of thousands in worst case. And of course "can't sell" is also not correct, people always can make direct trades, or use currency converter services instead of the markets.

That is clickbait with some fud mixed in the article to scare the common people at the bottom, the people who need bitcoin the most, from buying and using it.

This is already interesting .....)
So, you want to say that such a serious and respected resource, like "The Telegraph", deliberately misleads people?

[bbc.reporter]

@bomj. I cannot answer that because I do not know if that is sarcasm, when you mentioned that The Telegraph as a serious and respected resource hehehe.

[veleten]

well it says many things about Blockchain.com and their service
they have to comply with the regulations and making the minimal amount that high saves them the trouble
in particular , the US customers are serviced by SFOX which are partnered with blockchain : https://www.sfox.com/
hence they have to comply to the rules set by this exchange
if I wanted to sell my coins I  could have sent them to any of the non-KYC exchanges and sold it there , so the article shows that
blockchain.com  is not very customer friendly , but it doesn't mean that you are limited to 0.01 btc and above amounts to be able to cash out , this is simply not true

[timerland]

Gary McFarlane, a crypto analyst at Interactive Investor, the stockbrokers, said Blockchain.com's minimum was far above the average transaction fee of $2.31 (£1.82). He said many of those who purchased cryptocurrencies would have been doing so speculatively and would own small amounts.

According to analysis by Interactive Investor, almost 18 million wallets currently hold less Bitcoin than Blockchain.com’s limit. A single person can own multiple wallets.

Mr McFarlane said: “Although individuals holding their Bitcoin in exchange wallets still own the holdings, they effectively can’t access it with these rules. Worse still, the exchange could be using those funds for liquidity on the exchange – such is the crypto wild west.”

I can't tell whether these guys are genuinely stupid, given no effort in actually researching how to transact with BTC, or intentionally trying to mislead others.

If the editor actually did any bit of research, they could have realized that there is no intrinsic limitation on the amount of BTC you can send, apart from the dust limit which is minimal. You can set your own fees if you used a wallet like Electrum, or Bitcoin Core, but no, they decide to go with the example of Blockchain.com - a very outdated example for sure as well, since fees are nowhere near that much now.

If you want to sell these small amounts, deposit onto Paxful or Localbitcoins, or any p2p platform for that matter! Why are you looking at heavily regulated exchanges with high barriers of entry if you've got less than $100 to trade?

I'd also like to see where they got the figures "millions of investors" from. It seems sensationalist and completely arbitrary.