I’m a Bittrex Hostage, What It Means For You
If you’re into crypto then it’s a good bet you’ve heard of Bittrex and likely even use it.
Be warned though, they can take your account hostage anytime, like they’ve done with mine.
I explain what’s going on below.
In early November I got a message from Bittrex that my account info did not match public records.
Mind you, this was not an email. The account just opened up in the Settings page one day with this message.
The problem is that I have a name that can be shortened and did not use my full first name when originally signing up. My public records have my full first name.
Unfortunately, you do not even have an opportunity to correct the small mistake.
Instead, I had to upgrade to an Enhance account which requires you to upload your ID.
No problem, I did that… a month ago.
Bittrex promises to respond in a week. That’s a load of bull.
The only correspondence I receive was an email asking if my problem had been resolved. Are you kidding me?
Apparently, Bittrex can’t even keep track of customer issues.
In the meantime, my account has been frozen! I cannot transfer any funds off the exchange.
To make matters worse, I can’t even access my records.
It’s no surprise to me to see Bittrex now consistently out of the top 5 exchanges in terms of volume.
So what you can do?
Take this as a lesson to not hold any funds on centralized exchanges.
I’m fortunate that 95% of my crypto funds are in cold storage. If they were all on Bittrex I’d be having a heart attack now.
As for Bittrex, once I get my coins off, I’ll never use them again.
Besides, Binance is so much better.
Anyone else out there getting screwed by Bittrex?
boycot bittrex i would never put any coin there...
Would you try Bitconnect? It has been up and running for a while and has seen a huge increase in its coin value, rising with Bitcoin. They make you money and pay you interest on your loan .
If you put as little as $100 dollars into Bitconnect, you can start earning daily. They allow you to compound the interest which increases the amount earned every day. Use this link to sign up
https://bitconnect.co/?ref=Matthew5099
By signing up under this link, this person receives a commission, and he pays back 80% of it. So you invest $100 and get 80% of the commission he makes from that investment.
i dont trust bit connect big scam i am sure
for me Bittrex is still the best option to trade Steem Dollars
I did get back on fwiw... I just try to keep as little coin on there as possible... just in case
Oh wow, so sorry to hear they locked your account. When I first heard of accounts being frozen, I panicked and withdrew all my funds immediately. I had to sell off some altcoins at a loss that I was holding because I didn't have wallets (or didn't want to bother), so now most of it is in cold storage. I only keep my funds on exchanges for short periods of time now.. at least that is the intention. Hm.. good that you mention it, I probably should get my IOTA back off of Binance again just to be sure.
I am still using Bittrex though, because I am occassionally cashing some of my Steemit profits out and it's one of the few places where you can sell STEEM or SBD (SBD is trading at $9.50 each holy cow!). And with the high withdrawal fee, and since my cash outs aren't that significant, I kind of have to wait a while before it's worth withdrawing it to my private wallet.
I wish Binance would support STEEM. Then I would move and never look back...
although Binance annoyed me too, to be honest. It turns out if you have the Discount Trading with BNB turned on, but don't have BNB you actually pay the fees out of the crypto you bought. So if you buy 100, you only get 99.9 or so. HOWEVER.. Binance doesn't support fractional buying or selling in many pairs!! So I end up with 0.9 that I cannot sell... and I cannot buy 0.1 to make it a whole either. And Etherdelta isn't an option either with CryptoKitties clogging the network making transactions super expensive.
It's not like 1 RDN token is that much money, but still I'm kind of bugged out about this.
I'm signed up to about a dozen exchanges now so I have options. Recently bought Steem on HitBTC. I may still end up using Bittrex for STEEM and SBD if I ever can again. You kind of have to go with what works in crypto these days and be flexible.
Agree on Binance they need more info on exactly how those BNB fees work. I have some stranded coins as well. I'm hoping in the future they'll be some sort of feature where you can cash them out all at once.
I've been using EtherDelta more too. I think the whole cryptokitty thing is bullish for ETH overall.
Sorry to hear that. I had been trading on Bittrex for a few months, and then had a gut feeling in Nov. to take off my money off the exchange even though I am fully verified, and I trust my gut without needing confirmation on the outside. I'm not planning on going back there.
Oh yes definitely CryptoKitties is a good development, but I didn't realize the network was clogged up so much... so being used to low gas cost, I deposited some ETH on it with only 0.5 gwei. This did the trick in afew minutes before.. but now I fear I may have to wait a long, long time for those funds to arrive to Etherdelta. Resending it is pointless too because I'll end up sending it twice..
Great read overall! Thanks for sharing! Looking forward to hearing more of your thoughts on the crypto markets!
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@college-is-dumb/bitcoin-crash-sunday-bitcoin-overpriced-investment-banks-manipulating-futures
Ouh, I keep noticing the same, if you do simple mistake in any of the exchanges, because of the huge demand, it's hard for them to reply and fix the issues. That's the growth challenge.
Thankfully yes, there are a lot of exchanges, keeping coins in cold storage or your own wallets always works.
I guess just a reminder to be careful and really great @g-dubs, that you were smart enough to put most in cold storage.
Good reminder for everyone else (including me) to be careful and watch the coins like a hawk :D
I also have 0.9 of a few coins on Binance . Well hopefully in a few years they will be worth thousands and I will happily exchange the 0.9 then .
Binance is better than Bittrex until it's not. As you said,you're safe to keep the funds on cold storage if you're not trading them , otherwise no place is safe at this time.
Having your trading acc frozen during the best alt buying opportunity in the past several months is really messed up. I hope Bittrex settles this horrible situation very soon.
Just gave you a re-steem.
Seriously I got some $$$ tied up there for over a month... all over paperwork they've received 3 times now.
Decentralized exchanges can't come fast enough.
Thanks for the re-steem!
Thanks for the heads up. I just moved all of my crypto off Bittrex. I only keep a little to swing trade, but other people are also complaining about Bittrex as well, so I feel much safer having everything in cold storage. I just recently signed up for Binance and purchased a few BNB. Is Binance considered decentralized?
Binance is centralized but plans to go decentralized. Timeline is like late 2018, early 2019. Check out the CEO, he's legit. They've done a great job since launching in July imo. If you decide to pay fees in BNB for the discount make sure to keep some on the exchange.
Sounds good. Yea I'm keeping my BNB on the exchange. It's chump change right now. I used some ARK delegate payouts to pick up some BNB. Decentralized seems to be the way to go. Do you have any trading experience with AEX or Bitshares?
Not AEX but yes with Bitshares. It's been a pain frankly. Right now I can't seem to send BTS to my account so I need to find some time to figure it out.
I own some ARK, where can I learn more about delegating?
I like delegating on Steem too btw.
I voted for Arkpool. I get 2 payouts daily like clockwork. But, I got into Ark back when it was .20-.25 cents so I have a pretty decent amount. I'm not sure how it works if you have a smaller amount. The nice thing is that you don't even have to keep your wallet open. The payouts come automatically once you open your wallet. It's called DPOS Delegated Proof Of Stake. I believe it costs one Ark to vote for a delegate.
Can you recommend a delegate for Steem?...I haven't looked into that. Is it similar to Ark, where you get small payouts depending on how much you own?
I got early too ;-p I'll be checking out Arkpool this weekend.
For Steem delegation there's usually offers on https://www.minnowbooster.net/market, 19.9% less fees, generally for 4 week periods. Keep in mind though after the delegation period is up it takes another week before you get your SP back. Not exactly sure why... but fyi.
As I said in another comment, I'd recommend never holding coin on an exchange for an extended period. Do your trading, and get it out of there until you need to do more trading. Control your own keys!
Sorry to hear that. That sounds unacceptable to me. Good luck with deblocking your account. Upvoted.
Oh man that really sucks, Its funny we here all these warnings but most ignore everything until it happens to yourself. Its an aweful thing to have to go through ;(
Yea it's a pain... but I'll survive. Keep ur cryptos safe!
Centralized exchanges always get into trouble when bitcoin have a high surge.
Let's hope they figure it out!
I was finally verified using the 2FA trick, but I had to do it twice to get in contact with the right guy. Join the following Telegram group if you have questions regarding the 2FA trick: https://t.co/9XZpuldx4p
Oh cool a hack... I'll be sure to check it out, thanks!
Well, this is highly concerning. Not only have I been solely using Bittrex, but there are rumors afloat that Bittrex may have been compromised and a whole slew of passport data was compromised.
I really might have to start looking into Binance... is it worthwhile using your referral code?
Binance is good. I took out the referral code... I can't tell if referral codes are ok on Steemit.
I don't see why not... it'd be crazy not to include it if you've got one.