I know the fact that HitBTC is scam exchange won't come as news to many of you but to those who are new to the space this should serve as a stern warning to never use this fraud syndicate to trade cryptocurrency. I read many stories before on how they are a group of swindlers but I was stupid enough to try their services for the first time ever because Binance was down when I made my trade.
HitBTC is currently holding my 19960 BAT (~1BTC) as of 05/12/19 and won't let me withdraw them. As far as I know it is illegal for any business entity national or international to forfeit investor's assets indefinitely like this but as I said earlier this is a fraud syndicate masquerading as a Cryptocurrency exchange.
On 05/13/19 I transferred 1 BTC to their exchange to buy 19960 BAT and when I wanted to withdraw my funds I was surprised to find that I can't do so without a KYC. I was extremely frustrated by this but I initially thought to myself that this is a standard procedure since 1 BTC is a relatively hefty amount of money so I submitted all the documents they requested for the KYC then visited their Telegram group and their Reddit page r/EN_HitBTC to talk to some representative to expedite the process only to find out that dozens of other users are in a similar situation as me, many of whom have been dragged through this for several months on end that even after providing all the additional silly information all of which have nothing to do with a standard KYC/AML, they continued to be stonewalled like in the case of one user on Telegram where they would ask him about his "trading strategy" (see Telegram exhibits below) to complete the KYC then totally ignoring him. Their new Reddit page (original was closed for some reason) also has a number of users mired in the same swamp of their KYC scam. The way they do this is by asking for standard KYC/AML information and after these are provided, they would ask you to document the origin of the funds by providing "screenshots of your deposit, trading and withdrawal history on service (exchange or wallet) that is related to the following transactions:-" and they list a number of hashes, 2 hashes in my case, then state that they "need to see detailed information (hash, addresses) for each of the mentioned transactions".
Simply put they are torturing users for months by asking them to provide screenshots of all wallets and transactions in their trade history even if THE WALLETS DON'T BELONG TO THEM(as in when you receive money from someone else, airdrop...etc) to prove that the money the exchange is holding belongs to the user (refer to the Telegram sceenshots below) . This might be an easy task for someone who just bought their coins from Coinbase , for example, and sent it directly to HitBTC but it would prove extremely cumbersome/impossible for a person with multiple wallets and many addresses who has been trading for years.
In my case, I sent two transactions the first was from a Wasabi Wallet ( it has an internal mixing service called CoinJoin) and the second one was sent from Samurai wallet. Using these two wallets renders tracing transactions impossible because of built in features that increase fungibility making tracing them to the original wallet very complicated even for a chain analysis firm but their brilliant customer support representative is unwilling to accept this fact and they won't unfreeze my account.
Now if I was an isolated case I would have thought that maybe their representative is just retarded or something but this is a systemic problem and they are scamming many people using this same technique as you guys can see on their new Reddit page and in their Telegram group https://t.me/EN_HitBTC that even after you provide them with all the screenshots they want they would still have some retarded request like taking pictures from around your house as in the link below or some other crazy sh*t.
https://ambcrypto.com/alleged-bitcoin-btc-withdrawal-scam-on-hitbtc-pointed-out-by-reddit-user/
https://coinnounce.com/alert-bitcoin-core-developer-accuses-hitbtc-of-scam/
Other examples from their Telegram. The smugness of their admins in the Telegram group really pissed me off, what a f*cking disgrace and a pathetic excuse for customer service!!!!
Exhibit A: Telling a user to provide screenshots from a wallet that he/she no longer has access to https://imgur.com/a/EDlTWcA ....Pathetic! How can he reason with a piece of sh*t like this
Exhibit B: Another KYC scam vicitm https://imgur.com/a/kcyp2tM ....international law my a*s!
Exhibit C: KYC scam vicitm https://imgur.com/a/IWJ3AfI
Exhibit D: https://imgur.com/a/9nZQVyE
Examples are endless, go and check for yourself: https://t.me/EN_HitBTC
Their WHOIS (scammy as f*ck, good luck getting anything from them): https://who.is/whois/hitbtc.com
Registrant Contact Information:
Name WhoisGuard Protected Organization WhoisGuard, Inc. Address P.O. Box 0823-03411 City Panama State / Province Panama Postal Code Country PA Phone+507.8365503 Fax+51.17057182
It is difficult to sue HitBTC because they intentionally hides the owners, country where incorporated..etc. Another good reason to AVOID them
Please, if you have been a victim of this fraud cartel don't suffer in silence and SPEAK OUT! I can only blame myself for what happened to me and I paid a heavy price for being ignorant. That being said, something has to be done about this rot that is plaguing the crypto space. We can all agree that scams are a serious problem afflicting the Crypto community right? Well we've got one here right in front of our eyes. HitBTC is the 8th biggest exchange with hundreds or perhaps thousands of victims yet they continue to exist and scam users until this day despite their flagrant ethical violations and racketeering....Why?
I call on all the influential people in the Crypto community, the Crypto Youtube community, the mods of this massive cryptocurrency subreddit and everyone else in between to aware users and all newcomers of the appalling behavior of this shady exchange and flat out theft that goes on on their platform especially with the influx of new users that we're seeing as our community continues to grow.
In an unrelated scam they even froze customers accounts ahead of "Proof of keys" events.....What the f*ck is wrong with these people! They are the epitome of everything wrong in Crypto!
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-exchange-hitbtc-freezes-customers-233031863.html
This is what I propose any fraud victim should do:
A. Report all fraud attempts to CoinMarketCap and Coinpaprika so hopefully with enough pressure they would be delisted from there.
B. Come talk about your experience in here at r/cryptocurrency and other Subreddits
C. Report them to the Ethereum Scam Database: https://etherscamdb.info/report
D. Report them to Google https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en
E. Report them to Ripoff Report https://www.ripoffreport.com/ (They%20already%20have%204%20reports%20against%20them%20and%20I'll%20add%20the%20fifth)
F. If you have any money there withdraw it right now regardless whether you are verified or not because they have been doing this to verified user too. Never do business with these people
G. I also got this idea from another victim
>>Please use this link to report the money which have been blocked/stolen by Hitbtc.
Make sure to add the company details which is as follows
“Hit Solution Limited, CR No.: 2510720. Registered / Principal Office: Unit 19, 7/F., One Midtown No.11 Hoi Shing Road, Tsuen Wan, New Territories, Hong Kong”
Filling the report is quite simple and will take you few minutes, a reference will be generated and the investigation team will reach you out in few days as confirmed by many traders who filed complains.
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