How can I find out if this CoinExchange.io funds recovery email is legit?

[Rachel53461]

A year or so ago when I learned CoinExchange had shutdown, I sent their support an email about recovering my funds. I got what appears to be an official reply from their support email today saying

The final withdrawal period has now commenced after which the exchange will be closed. Please visit www.coinexchange.io and carefully follow the instructions to withdraw any remaining coins in your account.

Withdrawals will be enabled until the end of the 30th of May 2021 (GMT time). Please make sure to withdraw any remaining funds before this date.

Navigating to the site in my browser takes me to what looks like a normal login, in which my username, password, and 2FA all worked to get me logged in (including the automated email about a login). The final step is to complete KYC Verification which includes sending them a photo of myself and my govt issued ID, which is something I had to do for Coinbase as well to access my funds.

This all SEEMS legit, however I am still wary about submitting my govt id to them. Does anyone know if there was any official announcement of all this, or if this is just some very clever spear-fishing scam? The fact my login and 2fa worked is a point in their favor (used a couple bad logins too just to verify it wasn't something that automatically let me go through). I would like to recover my btc from this site, which is probably a few thousand at this point. Is there any way to validate this is really them, and not some 3rd party that has bought the domainname and is fishing for information?

[BitMaxz]

There is no way to know if the Coinexchange domain was sold and handle by the new owner.

I tried to check it on whois lookup but it seems their old update is "Updated Date: 2019-02-21T00:52:11Z" and "Last update of WHOIS database: 2021-05-26T14:28:59Z"
registered until 2023-01-09.

What I think is this website was sold days ago or might be sold a few months ago and run again on 2021-05-26.

I don't know if this is enough proof but I believe that it was sold and the new owner trying to get your old data including private information.

Another thing is it doesn't even have history/record around 2020 on archive.org and popup again last May 2021.

[sujonali1819]

Yeah, few days ago someone created a thread in this forum, that means I know it already.

Btw till now it looks like legit since it already posted by the website and in their official twitter also.

Just few minutes ago I visited the site and try to recover my old password. All works Pretty well. But when I see people need to submit withdrawal application they need to VERIFY KYC.  Also I can not see what the balance I had there.

[Rachel53461]

Is it on their official twitter? I did not see anything on there.

From what I can tell, the website came back online with little fanfare with some notice saying they would be reopening the site on May 18 for withdrawl of funds, and close it again on the 30th. None of the actual withdrawls would occur until after that window is closed, so nobody can say if they are actually getting their coins back.

I saw the whois domain update in Feb 2019, but wasn't sure what occurs that would update the "Last Updated" field. The original domainname was registered in 2016 and expired in 2023. Would them selling the domain to someone else just cause Update?

For what it's worth, the site was always rather unsecure and felt fishy, which is why I had a "junk" password on it. The fact they announced their closure with a tweet and shutdown 2 weeks later with everyone's coins didn't help. I am unclear on if this is a legitimate attempt to get users back their coins (perhaps because of a lawsuit), or if they're just trying to double-dip and steal login info and KYC docs for identity fraud.

[BitMaxz]

Is it on their official twitter? I did not see anything on there.

They have all social media accounts but there is no update about their site on their Twitter or even on their telegram.

Here's their list of social media profile

https://www.facebook.com/officialCoinExchange/
https://twitter.com/coinexchange_io
https://t.me/official_coinexchange
https://discordapp.com/invite/qDxVD9x

I suggest you if you want to be safe and don't want to risk your private information it would be better don't submit anything and try to contact them with their social media accounts to verify if they still have control of their website.

If they don't respond for more than a week then probably this is a trap(Phishing site) trying to collect all users private info that they can use to any evil deeds.

[Rachel53461]

Thanks for the list of social media accounts. From what I can tell, those were all abandoned when they shut the site down.

I did find my login for their official support site, and discovered the email I got was a reply sent from the support team where they sent it out and closed my support ticket 11 hours ago. There is a new section in the Terms and Conditions on their site for "Closure of CoinExchange and Withdrawals", and the main page of the site now serves as their "official closure notice" and includes the line "This notice constitutes a Closure Notice as set out in clause 22 of the terms & conditions governing www.coinexchange.io."

Right now I am leaning in the direction that they got hit with some kind of lawsuit and are trying to jump through hoops to make the money on the exchange officially theirs. It seems like it would otherwise be a very elaborate scam to buy the domain, buy all the site's software and data associated with it, NOT advertise the brief site reopening period for final withdrawals (May 18 to 30), and just hope that the profit made from getting login info and KYC docs is enough to offset the money/time/effort put into it setting this up. The site was always rather fishy and unsecure, so it was largely full of troll users and altcoin pushers. Or maybe that's just my wishful thinking...

[hugeblack]

Why don't you ask the platform to show their business address, and then you can check whether the platform is authentic or not.
I also suggest that you try to enter some fake data to make sure that the person managing the site has access to the entire database and is not stolen username/password.

Generally, many of scam cases presented use the same trick as they close suddenly and then appear with a specific deadline for withdrawal, and thus the depositors' money becomes legal.

Personally, I do not advise you to send your data. The time required in many countries "Final Withdrawals" is 6 months, not a few days.

[sujonali1819]

They have all social media accounts but there is no update about their site on their Twitter or even on their telegram.

Ah, wired! Then where I saw that coinexchange posted in twitter that they are going to activated the withdrawal for the user who has balance in exchange. Totally wired to me. As I remember I saw somewhere in twitter, even the twitter account was also followed by me previously. 😥 but I can not find it.

[Rachel53461]

Thank you for that, I didn't realize this was a common scam. The fact you say they "close suddenly then appear with a specific deadline for withdrawal" to make the money legal actually adds to the legitimacy in my eyes, as everything I've seen so far suggests that they are only doing this for some legal reason. They definitely do not seem to be advertising the fact they are reopening for a short time, and the email I got was because of the open support ticket I had submitted almost a year ago.

I'm pretty sure they never had a business address. As I mentioned before, this was always a suspicious site and that was one of the reasons this site had a "junk" password and only "play" money. But it was a great site for arbitrage, as it had a public api and no bots, so was the primary site I used to earn btc. The fact they closed down 2019 and never sent an email to users (only tweeted about it on their social media) should give some indication about how sketchy of a company it was, and could potentially be the reason for this unannounced withdrawal period.

[Hamphser]

Here is some thread about that coinexchange closure discussion. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5189124.0

This is already old and their social media platform and other mediums arent that updated nor have an activity and those points above
mentioned on first few post does really have those valid points for you to doubt on to proceed.

[Potato Chips]

According to this user, it seems they are using passbase to handle their KYC. Try to reach out to passbase instead and ask if they are still in service to coinexchange.io as you are worried about your data's safety. It doesn't fully eliminate your concern, but risk would definitely be reduced if confirmed they are still servicing them imo.  

I get this "PassBase KYC verification issues are not yet resolved. We have temporarily disabled KYC verification at the request of PassBase. We are working with them to resolve this issue as quickly as possible. We will be extending the deadline accordingly. Thank you for your patience."

The reddit thread by the way is for users like you, so might help to read it all/post to update each other.

[Kittygalore]

Check their website directly and go to their support and try to find the email and if it is different then you will have some reason to doubt but you can also ask a question to that website's email and ask them about the email that you are having some suspicion.

[Potato Chips]

Check their website directly and go to their support and try to find the email and if it is different then you will have some reason to doubt but you can also ask a question to that website's email and ask them about the email that you are having some suspicion.

It's still the same as before but it's defunct now and all their social network sites seems abandoned including their BCT account CoinExchange.io— last active: September 16, 2019


photo from u/Junkis of reddit

This complete blocking of any communication is so shady, it looks like a way to claim as many funds as possible after the deadline... I'm not buying that they don't have the means to recover their support channels (portal + SNS) and even if they actually don't, they could've just set up a new medium to connect to their users especially because withdrawal problems are bound to happen to some users.

@op, Another thing to consider is, even if this is actually them, there is still a chance of misuse of personal data...  you yourself op has found them sus too.

[Kittygalore]

~

photo from u/Junkis of reddit

Well shit, it seems that this exchange doesn't want to talk to their customers and that's a big red flag for me because that's like preparing yourself for an exit scam which I am pretty sure is already happening.

[Rachel53461]

Their exit scam was 2 years ago when they tweeted they were shutting down and closed the site a few weeks later. No email to users or anything. That's why I think this is some legal hoop they have to jump through to legalize all the funds on the site.

[khaled0111]

This reminds me of Livecoin exchange. They claimed they were hacked and shut down their service. Later, they announced they will refund customers who will verify their identities. But to my knowledge, not a single user (with enough credibility) has confirmed receiving anything from them.

It looks more like an attempt to avoid being sued or legalize the stolen coins than a genuine intention to refund their customers.

[kram31]

As far as I know even you send a message to their support portal, I think it is no longer operational.
Meaning, don't expect anything that is good for this platform exchange dude. Because according to the most of the community
here in this filed of business this has been called as one of the scam exchange.