HitBTC market making scam - they are NOT paying out!

[stevec]

I completed market making contracts worth $6000 USD, however HitBTC have not paid, and are not responding to emails or questions on their forum asking what has happened to the money.

They've now deleted the forum post I made too (https://forum.hitbtc.com/index.php?p=/discussion/9/hitbtc-not-paying-out-on-market-making-bonuses).

If you are considering market making for them PLEASE DONT! You won't get paid, and if they aren't paying their bills there is a good chance that they are about to shut down.

/Steve

[usupnaruto]

you link is "Discussion Not Found" maybe they remove you thread in there

[stevec]

Yes - they deleted my post without comment. Basically I just posted that I completed the contracts (S &  XS on both BTCUSD and BTCEUR) and that they owed me the money, and had not replied to any emails asking what had happened to the payment.

All I can think is that they are either scamming or bankrupt, and don't want their customers to find out what they are up to. I can't think of any legitimate reason that they would delete the post.

/Steve

[zauker]

I can correctly read the post in their forum now. Btw, any news about your issue?

[slacknation]

any updates to this?

[HerrAndreas]

Any news on getting your money?

As I had to find out, they are de-verifing bank accounts so they do not have to pay fiat to their customers (normal trading, no market making).

Something is going south there.

[Faceboss]

HitBTC
Early warning is the name!

[HerrAndreas]

I managed to exit the last few k euro.

my farewell to hitbtc.com at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=911995.0

it´s a shame. I had high hopes for them.

[stevec]

No - they never paid, and never responded to multiple emails asking what had happened. They still advertise the same market making bonuses on their website, but these are obviously a scam.

I contacted a couple of debt collection agents in Denmark, however according to them the company appears to be just a shell company and has no assets in Denmark to claim against - hence unlikely to ever get my money back.

/Steve

[HerrAndreas]

Sorry to hear that.

concerning their organisational set-up they seem to be no more then a system of shells (mostly cheap limited companies) in virtual offices all over the place.

The only person I ever saw speaking out in their name is Andrej Savchenko (a name like the proverbial "Joe Smith" in the former USSR) from Ullus on yt. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIyxBjUjXWk).
Although I must admit he does not seem to be in charge.
When you take a look at the parent company originally quoted, Ullus Corpo., from Panama City (which originally also was the beneficiary of fiat deposits at hitbtc), you will find a very basic website at http://www.ulluscorp.com/ which is available in English and French.
Ullus corp also is/was behind catpay, which seems to be offline meanwhile.

If you count 2 and 2 together (and have been around for some time), the combination of english, french, cats and latin word plays with shell company names ("Ullus" is just "Any-(body)" in Latin) might give you an idea of who you are dealing with...

But mind you, this is just pure speculation and the opposite might be true.....

[bezzz]

Strange thing here is that stevec seems to be the only person with such problems. They have has several markets and if you take a closer look you'll see there appear to be several mm's, operating on the exchange. And no other claim. Why? If, as you say, they are about to shut down, there should be at least >1 complain of not paying out. Seems like this story might be a little bit more complicated.

[HerrAndreas]

Strange thing here is that stevec seems to be the only person with such problems. They have has several markets and if you take a closer look you'll see there appear to be several mm's, operating on the exchange. And no other claim. Why? If, as you say, they are about to shut down, there should be at least >1 complain of not paying out. Seems like this story might be a little bit more complicated.

it is indeed strange, that you hear so little from other users. NOt even anyone coming forward to say that for him everything works fine.

I believe that a great part of the market making happens very close to the servers. when they started out they had a super constant trading volume which was not the least impressed by volatility. This changed from one moment to the next when someone pointed it out on reddit and accused them of orderbook manipulation. Check the meanwhile closed official hitbtc thread here on bt and the historical data from bitcoincharts. It seems indeed, that most of the trading on hitbtc is not made by people who read (let alone write) anything here.

It is most likely that they have run into problems with their bank and that their account has been frozen or closed (happened to many others before - bitstamp, which changed from unicredit to raiffeisen and and others had the same problems - including myself).

In the end it doesn´t really matter why they are not able to pay people their fiat balances.

[Febo]

There are rumours of HitBtc, for many months. Is a bit strange it last that long. Usually or happen fast and explode.

[HerrAndreas]

There are rumours of HitBtc, for many months. Is a bit strange it last that long. Usually or happen fast and explode.

the last thing to die is hope (of people with funds inside).

and that´s why it took gox for instance over a year to collapse (remember those minmum 6 weeks to withdraw fiat months before it finally imploded?).

The guy behind hitbtc does and so do I.

[Dilemma]

and one more SCAM bitcoin system
every day, even every hour we learn new robber site
what a shame 

[HerrAndreas]

great parody (?) of the hitbtc.com verification process at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=916429.0.

[stevec]

Strange thing here is that stevec seems to be the only person with such problems. They have has several markets and if you take a closer look you'll see there appear to be several mm's, operating on the exchange. And no other claim. Why? If, as you say, they are about to shut down, there should be at least >1 complain of not paying out. Seems like this story might be a little bit more complicated.

First, if you look at their market data for the major pairs (BTCUSD, BTCEUR, BTCLTC), you can see that nobody is quoting to fulfill the market maker requirements. I saw this before I started market making, and I see it now. Effectively I was the only market maker.

For example, their smallest level of participation requires 1 BTC per side at <= 0.3%. Current market depth on BTCUSD is this:
http://s14.postimg.org/96j58xzz3/hitbtcdepth.jpg

http://s14.postimg.org/96j58xzz3/hitbtcdepth.jpg

So the current spread for 1 BTC is 296.33 / 300.57. Thats a 1.43% spread, so clearly > 0.3% they require. You can repeat the same process for the other levels and pairs and you'll see that nobody is quoting tight enough to meet their requirements.

Second, if there was some other explanation surely they would have responded to my complaint on their own forums: https://forum.hitbtc.com/discussion/9/hitbtc-not-paying-out-on-market-making-bonuses

They have never responded to me, either publicly or privately to explain why they never paid the money they owed.

I have full logs of my market making activity, and a full email trail of the discussion with their customer rep "Andrus Holm", up until the point at which I asked what had happened to the payment. From that point on, nobody has responded to any emails regarding the issue, and any support tickets I open are just closed without comment.

/Steve