Is Bittrex the next Mt Gox?
I am writing this to publicly warn crypto-users about disturbing new behavior from Bittrex, one that’s oddly reminiscent of Mt Gox before they collapsed.
Bittrex have decided to freeze my 2-year long account despite relatively minor trading activity and being a fully-verified and KYC’d user.
Not only am I fully verified, but they had recently asked me to provide them information about some BTC I deposited (a small amount, compared to the volumes we’re seeing now). I understood their concern, so I complied with their privacy-violating request “just to be a good little boy”.
In short, I explained to them, via their “Source of Funds Compliance Form” that I bought BTC back in 2011 from Mt Gox.
Attached were bank records from 2011 and 2013 proving deposits of USD into japanese Mt Gox bank accounts. Great, gave away some privacy for security. All good, right?
Bittrex then freeze my account and demand impossible to produce documentation!
Think about that. I’m a fully photo-verified, KYC’d user. They know all my personal details. I filled out their privacy-violating compliance form, handed over my private bank records and they decide to freeze my account without warning! They demand I produce documentation from 8 years ago in order to get my money back. Well it’s a little hard to provide the following documentation:
- Withdrawal receipts of BTC from Mt Gox from 2011 and 2013
- Salary slips from 2011 for the measly $2–3k I used to buy that BTC on GOX.
So, since I cannot produce these documents, guess what folks? Bittrex gets to keep my seized account (about 3 BTC worth).
Think about that. What kind of exchange behaves like this? Ironically, this reminds me exactly of how Mt Gox was behaving right before it collapsed. I was one of those annoying trolls from the trollbox’s shouting from rooftops about Gox’s insolvency. Not many listened back then. Is anyone listening now?
Is history about to repeat itself? Time to run for the hills from Bittrex?
PS: The only reason I have a verified KYC account with Bittrex is because it’s mandatory for coin listings. As one of the non-founding developers of PascalCoin, I was doing these listing requests. They never ended up listing us (despite persistent demand from our community). The only feedback I remember was literaly “lol” and “hahaha” from some tech guy “Michael” thinking that the “Pascal language is a joke”. He apparently doesn’t know Turbo Pascal is not the same as Object Pascal and that Delphi / Free Pascal Compiler have built actual stock market engines. Looks like Bittrex has serious issues across the board, to be honest!
UPDATE: Appears to be an accelerating trend. This is exactly what Mt Gox was doing right before they collapsed.
UPDATE 2: Bittrex sent me the below email soon after I published this article
So basically (paraphrasing) “Sorry we accidently seized all your funds but your medium article made us find the error quicker than the usual 2 months it takes us. Your funds are SAFU with us and NO WAY they were going to some leveraged trade account at all!!”.
Did anyone check to see if they hired Mark Karpeles at the trading desk? This is literally how Mt Gox was behaving.
