Is it just me or are instant swap services getting worse in 2025?

[Satofan44]

There's enough smoke about ChangeNOW that it must be safer for you to avoid it and anything related with the service altogether. Godex's profile, at least on this forum, is full of red trusts. There's also an existing flag against them. SimpleSwap is also distrusted here.

It is interesting how people write about these services here because I exclusively only use ChangeNOW and SimpleSwap and didn't have a single issue to date. What exactly do you think that they are supposed to do if their risk system flags your transaction?

At the very least, they should provide sufficient explanation why the transaction is flagged. You don't just keep the funds of customers without a detailed explanation why you're doing it, or suddenly require personal explanation without saying why. Second, if you think the transaction shouldn't proceed, reject it, but return the funds to the owner. Why do they have to keep the money to themselves?

Have you considered the following two possibilities. First, they may not be legally allowed to tell you much. Second, if they reveal all the things that flags their system then it becomes easy to bypass it?

The same thing happens with exchanges, yet somehow people keep singling out the swap services. There are countless nightmare stories for most exchanges on Reddit.

I'm sure the same thing has been said for exchanges. Most experienced members that I know of aren't fond of this kind of practice, whether it occurs on an exchange, instant swap service, casino, or elsewhere. Maybe you haven't seen their posts yet.
It's a shame that a lack of transparency has gradually become the norm nowadays. Not sure what are the reasons for that, hopefully it will get better in the future.

I have probably not seen those posts, but what do you want these services to do? As I said in my previous post, it is either over comply or get shut down. Instead of blaming exchanges, why not blame the right entities? The politicians that made these laws?

Think about it logically. If it were possibly to make a very competitive, very transparent exchange or swap service, don't you think that someone would have made it already? Since competitors are not emerging to seize on these weaknesses, that means there is a solid reason why that is not happening.

[Coyster]

I have used Exodus wallet built in swap feature...

I would be careful if i were you, there are a lot of complaints about Exodus wallet and their in-built swap feature, sometimes they process people's swap request using selective scam exchanges, and the customers are left stranded and have to wait months requesting to get their money back, that is if they ever will. This is one of such cases were Exodus routed a customers swap request with N. Exchange:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5540242.msg65337645#msg65337645

That said, this is not to mention another obvious downside that Exodus is a closed source wallet too.

[348Judah]

Don't use a platform for swap if that is your first experience with them, instead, before using them, you have to research about them, try to make findings on how they have been operating and check some of their revies, now that this platform has been confirmed to be unreliable, we should desist form using them and also let other newbies to get this information and be well informed before they turned to be a victim of these scammers, that is why this forum is most relevant in passing across all vital information about cryptocurrency to other users across the world for safety.

[pawanjain]

I have used Exodus wallet built in swap feature...

I would be careful if i were you, there are a lot of complaints about Exodus wallet and their in-built swap feature, sometimes they process people's swap request using selective scam exchanges, and the customers are left stranded and have to wait months requesting to get their money back, that is if they ever will. This is one of such cases were Exodus routed a customers swap request with N. Exchange:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5540242.msg65337645#msg65337645

That said, this is not to mention another obvious downside that Exodus is a closed source wallet too.

Yes ofcourse, after finding that out about their high fees I avoided their swap feature.
Thank god, I didn't swap my BTC for ETH otherwise I would have been at risk of getting my funds stuck too.
I haven't found any good swap feature after that but looking at this thread I see there are few options.

[Darker45]

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~snip~

At the very least, they should provide sufficient explanation why the transaction is flagged. You don't just keep the funds of customers without a detailed explanation why you're doing it, or suddenly require personal explanation without saying why. Second, if you think the transaction shouldn't proceed, reject it, but return the funds to the owner. Why do they have to keep the money to themselves?

Have you considered the following two possibilities. First, they may not be legally allowed to tell you much. Second, if they reveal all the things that flags their system then it becomes easy to bypass it?

You tell that to the people who have lost life-savings, life-changing amounts to these scam exchanges. You tell that to the clueless customers who forever wondered what happened to their hard-earned money. They got no proper explanation, no response even. 

The possibilities you're talking about are the most convenient ways for these scammers to steal money. Forget about legalities. I'm sure these behaviors and alibis can't stand in a court of law. If only it's easy to bring these scumbags to court.

[Satofan44]

Have you considered the following two possibilities. First, they may not be legally allowed to tell you much. Second, if they reveal all the things that flags their system then it becomes easy to bypass it?

You tell that to the people who have lost life-savings, life-changing amounts to these scam exchanges. You tell that to the clueless customers who forever wondered what happened to their hard-earned money. They got no proper explanation, no response even.  

The possibilities you're talking about are the most convenient ways for these scammers to steal money. Forget about legalities. I'm sure these behaviors and alibis can't stand in a court of law. If only it's easy to bring these scumbags to court.

Yes, I will gladly tell them because they are the ones at fault. Deal with it, stop running away from responsibility. Read the terms of service before you send your money away to somewhere. If you believe that you have been wronged, then go ahead and sue. I wonder why practically no allegedly scammed party tries to sue.  

Everything is the user's fault, nobody was forcing them to do this. If you don't understand the risks of your actions, you are entirely to blame. Nobody else but you. It may sound harsh, but this is the reality of it. Don't want to get scammed? DYOR and start getting properly educated before you use something.
You should consider the topic in a more profound way, rather than making a superficial judgement of it.

If it were possibly to make a very competitive, very transparent exchange or swap service, don't you think that someone would have made it already? Since competitors are not emerging to seize on these weaknesses, that means there is a solid reason why that is not happening.

If you believe there is no good reason for things to be this way, open your swap service and destroy the competition.

[Darker45]

Have you considered the following two possibilities. First, they may not be legally allowed to tell you much. Second, if they reveal all the things that flags their system then it becomes easy to bypass it?

You tell that to the people who have lost life-savings, life-changing amounts to these scam exchanges. You tell that to the clueless customers who forever wondered what happened to their hard-earned money. They got no proper explanation, no response even.  

The possibilities you're talking about are the most convenient ways for these scammers to steal money. Forget about legalities. I'm sure these behaviors and alibis can't stand in a court of law. If only it's easy to bring these scumbags to court.

Yes, I will gladly tell them because they are the ones at fault...

Everything is the user's fault...

I don't know if you're currently or used to be a developer, staff, part of the team, or whatever of an exchange, but I don't agree with your view. You'll probably stick to it. I'm not here to convince you otherwise, anyway. But I don't think it's fair; to be guaranteed that your funds are safe, for example, but were suddenly frozen for no reason at all.

Cases were filed, although most of the time, it isn't practical to do so considering how costly it is to really pursue a company based in the Bahamas or Seychelles for a mere $500 or $1,000 or $5,000.

Let's just agree to disagree I guess if you really think everything's the user's fault. But you must have heard of FTX, QuadrigaCX, Cryptsy, and many others. There's fraud. There's mismanagement, lack of security, negligence, and the like, but, yeah, the users are the ones at fault.

[nc50lc]

But I don't think it's fair; to be guaranteed that your funds are safe, for example, but were suddenly frozen for no reason at all.

I couldn't agree more.
What's happening is they're displaying that fancy "no-KYC" banner just to attract customers while enforcing it silently under the hood.
If a Swap Service doesn't have a choice but to enforce KYC requirement, they shouldn't advertise themselves as "no-KYC exchange" or at least mention it in their TOS that the user complied with.
An honest exchange should be transparent on what they're enforcing. (even though it's hard to find like a single line in the exchange's terms of service, that still counts)

There are two cases here:

• It's the user's fault if he didn't read the service's TOS, Privacy Policy or FAQs where it's stated the above.
• Or the service is a scam/honeypot/mismanaged if the user doesn't agreed to a TOS that they may enforce "ShotGun KYC".

[Cryptohygenic]

Ive used ChangeNOW Godex and SimpleSwap in the past few years but lately things dont seem right. More slippage unclear fee breakdowns and strange delays even though the sites say exchanges will happen instantly. I just tried to trade BTC for USDC and I got a lot less than I thought I would even after paying the network fees. Is it just the market going up and down or are these platforms getting harder to understand?

I have not used ChangeNOW Godex or the SimpleSwap before so I can not talk about their reputation but if you haven't been having a regular smooth services as before, it could be network congratulations which had caused the delay of processing your transactions and transaction fees would increase for miners to facilitate on the network transaction otherwise, your transactions will be delayed longer than what you got when you got higher charged.
Also note that exchange values of bitcoin varies severely in due time. So there is always a price change when dealing with an exchange vendor.

[Satofan44]

Let's just agree to disagree I guess if you really think everything's the user's fault. But you must have heard of FTX, QuadrigaCX, Cryptsy, and many others. There's fraud. There's mismanagement, lack of security, negligence, and the like, but, yeah, the users are the ones at fault.

I can understand some people such as traders losing money on an exchange, but for the rest not really. This goes against the basics of Bitcoin. Not your keys, not your coins. If you have kept coins on an exchange, then you have used Bitcoin wrongly. Harsh, but the reality. In a different but similar way you can imagine the following. One night you decide to leave the door to your house unlocked. Nothing happens. You decide to do it again because locking the door is annoying and takes precious time. Nothing happens for a great many nights. Then one night you get robbed, and you blame everything and everyone that you got robbed besides yourself. Do you understand taking responsibility now?

I don't know if you're currently or used to be a developer, staff, part of the team, or whatever of an exchange, but I don't agree with your view. You'll probably stick to it. I'm not here to convince you otherwise, anyway. But I don't think it's fair; to be guaranteed that your funds are safe, for example, but were suddenly frozen for no reason at all.

Cases were filed, although most of the time, it isn't practical to do so considering how costly it is to really pursue a company based in the Bahamas or Seychelles for a mere $500 or $1,000 or $5,000.

I do not have anything to do with exchanges, and I hate KYC so you are entirely mistaken about me. I try not to be biased and try to evaluate things that I do not like in an objective way too. You can debate responsibility subjectively to some extent, but you can't subjectively debate the lack of competitors. Why have practically none of these lawsuits ever been won? This isn't just about swap services like ChainNow which I can give you points for being harder to sue. This kind of nightmare stories exist even in regards to the most regulated exchanges like Coinbase. Do you think it is hard to sue Coinbase? If the users are right about these claims, then they should be winning easily. Further, you are completely ignoring my core argument because it is an inconvenient truth.  

If it were possibly to make a very competitive, very transparent exchange or swap service, don't you think that someone would have made it already? Since competitors are not emerging to seize on these weaknesses, that means there is a solid reason why that is not happening.

If you believe there is no good reason for things to be this way, open your swap service and destroy the competition.

What's happening is they're displaying that fancy "no-KYC" banner just to attract customers while enforcing it silently under the hood.
If a Swap Service doesn't have a choice but to enforce KYC requirement, they shouldn't advertise themselves as "no-KYC exchange" or at least mention it in their TOS that the user complied with.
An honest exchange should be transparent on what they're enforcing. (even though it's hard to find like a single line in the exchange's terms of service, that still counts)

The argument was not about this. The argument was whether shotgun KYC is scamming or whether swap services and exchanges are forced to do it like this. I argue the latter with various ways, many people just argue the former with weak reasons. I do agree with you though, it shouldn't be marketed like this and it is wrong. However, most marketing in altcoin land is a scam so you can call it business as usual.  

• It's the user's fault if he didn't read the service's TOS, Privacy Policy or FAQs where it's stated the above.
• Or the service is a scam/honeypot/mismanaged if the user doesn't agreed to a TOS that they may enforce "ShotGun KYC".

The second case is not possible, it does not exist. You accept the TOS when you use a service. If you don't agree with the TOS and you don't want to accept it, then you can't use the service. As such you won't find yourself in such a situation.

[nc50lc]

• It's the user's fault if he didn't read the service's TOS, Privacy Policy or FAQs where it's stated the above.
• Or the service is a scam/honeypot/mismanaged if the user doesn't agreed to a TOS that they may enforce "ShotGun KYC".

The second case is not possible, it does not exist. You accept the TOS when you use a service. If you don't agree with the TOS and you don't want to accept it, then you can't use the service. As such you won't find yourself in such a situation.

I didn't said that they have to manually accept, why would you assume that.
That is the point of my reply, you can consider the marketed "no-KYC" swap service a scam if they do not have any written form that mentioned that they may require KYC data on certain transactions.
My reply isn't being specific on a few instant swap exchanges but about swap services in general.

[Trêvoid]

Let's just agree to disagree I guess if you really think everything's the user's fault. But you must have heard of FTX, QuadrigaCX, Cryptsy, and many others. There's fraud. There's mismanagement, lack of security, negligence, and the like, but, yeah, the users are the ones at fault.

I can understand some people such as traders losing money on an exchange, but for the rest not really. This goes against the basics of Bitcoin. Not your keys, not your coins. If you have kept coins on an exchange, then you have used Bitcoin wrongly. Harsh, but the reality. In a different but similar way you can imagine the following. One night you decide to leave the door to your house unlocked. Nothing happens. You decide to do it again because locking the door is annoying and takes precious time. Nothing happens for a great many nights. Then one night you get robbed, and you blame everything and everyone that you got robbed besides yourself. Do you understand taking responsibility now?

I don't know if you're currently or used to be a developer, staff, part of the team, or whatever of an exchange, but I don't agree with your view. You'll probably stick to it. I'm not here to convince you otherwise, anyway. But I don't think it's fair; to be guaranteed that your funds are safe, for example, but were suddenly frozen for no reason at all.

Cases were filed, although most of the time, it isn't practical to do so considering how costly it is to really pursue a company based in the Bahamas or Seychelles for a mere $500 or $1,000 or $5,000.

I do not have anything to do with exchanges, and I hate KYC so you are entirely mistaken about me. I try not to be biased and try to evaluate things that I do not like in an objective way too. You can debate responsibility subjectively to some extent, but you can't subjectively debate the lack of competitors. Why have practically none of these lawsuits ever been won? This isn't just about swap services like ChainNow which I can give you points for being harder to sue. This kind of nightmare stories exist even in regards to the most regulated exchanges like Coinbase. Do you think it is hard to sue Coinbase? If the users are right about these claims, then they should be winning easily. Further, you are completely ignoring my core argument because it is an inconvenient truth.  

If it were possibly to make a very competitive, very transparent exchange or swap service, don't you think that someone would have made it already? Since competitors are not emerging to seize on these weaknesses, that means there is a solid reason why that is not happening.

If you believe there is no good reason for things to be this way, open your swap service and destroy the competition.

What's happening is they're displaying that fancy "no-KYC" banner just to attract customers while enforcing it silently under the hood.
If a Swap Service doesn't have a choice but to enforce KYC requirement, they shouldn't advertise themselves as "no-KYC exchange" or at least mention it in their TOS that the user complied with.
An honest exchange should be transparent on what they're enforcing. (even though it's hard to find like a single line in the exchange's terms of service, that still counts)

The argument was not about this. The argument was whether shotgun KYC is scamming or whether swap services and exchanges are forced to do it like this. I argue the latter with various ways, many people just argue the former with weak reasons. I do agree with you though, it shouldn't be marketed like this and it is wrong. However, most marketing in altcoin land is a scam so you can call it business as usual.  

• It's the user's fault if he didn't read the service's TOS, Privacy Policy or FAQs where it's stated the above.
• Or the service is a scam/honeypot/mismanaged if the user doesn't agreed to a TOS that they may enforce "ShotGun KYC".

The second case is not possible, it does not exist. You accept the TOS when you use a service. If you don't agree with the TOS and you don't want to accept it, then you can't use the service. As such you won't find yourself in such a situation.

Hi, @Satofan44

You’re both right in different ways: users should take responsibility for their own security (“not your keys, not your coins”), but it’s also true that many exchanges have failed due to fraud, mismanagement, or negligence, and blaming users alone ignores the real harm caused by these bad actors.

[Satofan44]

I didn't said that they have to manually accept, why would you assume that.
That is the point of my reply, you can consider the marketed "no-KYC" swap service a scam if they do not have any written form that mentioned that they may require KYC data on certain transactions.
My reply isn't being specific on a few instant swap exchanges but about swap services in general.

In principle I do agree with you, but in practice I do not. We could basically call almost all marketing a scam, even the largest companies in the world at least partially lying with their marketing. For example, they tend to cheat a lot with benchmarking phones or processors in unrealistic setups and then advertise their products with false data. If a swap service does not require KYC in 99.99% of the transactions, what should it write instead? "Almost never KYC?" In an perfect world, this is how marketing would be done. It would be precise, there would be no tricks or special cases but we don't live in such a world.

I'm not talking about any swap service in particular either, aside from sharing that I have had zero issues with the ones that I have used. I would expect that most of them or all of them mention that KYC may be required in certain situations in their TOS. If it is written in the TOS, does that not make it acceptable? As I said, you can't expect perfection from these services in terms of marketing when even the most reputable companies in the world often lie in their marketing.

Hi, @Satofan44

You’re both right in different ways: users should take responsibility for their own security (“not your keys, not your coins”), but it’s also true that many exchanges have failed due to fraud, mismanagement, or negligence, and blaming users alone ignores the real harm caused by these bad actors.

You are correct. What I mean to say is that before someone blames the exchange they first need to ask themselves whether they are at fault. A normal user has no reason to keep any funds on an exchange. You can get unlucky if the exchange gets hacked or goes down during the time that you tried to make an exchange. However, I'd expect that those are just a tiny minority of very unlucky users. Most users that have been affected are people who regularly store funds on an exchange or those that actively trade. I've never lost any funds in this way because I never held any funds on any exchange.

[nc50lc]

That is the point of my reply, you can consider the marketed "no-KYC" swap service a scam if they do not have any written form that mentioned that they may require KYC data on certain transactions.

In principle I do agree with you, but in practice I do not. We could basically call almost all marketing a scam, even the largest companies in the world at least partially lying with their marketing. For example, they tend to cheat a lot with benchmarking phones or processors in unrealistic setups and then advertise their products with false data. If a swap service does not require KYC in 99.99% of the transactions, what should it write instead? "Almost never KYC?"

Like I said, write something like "they may require KYC data on certain transactions." in their TOS, even as small as one phrase.
They can advertise "no KYC" as shameless way as possible, but at least mention the above and they could get out of the "scam exchange" category.
In case the user didn't read the terms of using the service, they can call it his fault.