Thousands of Bittrex users recently took to various social media platforms, as well as prominent cryptocurrency websites, to complain about their accounts being disabled for no reason. Most accounts have a few things in common. The user generally tried to open tickets, asked for help on Bittrex’s Slack channel, and afterwards were ignored and banned.
One user stated that he currently has six bitcoin (the equivalent of $30,000) in his Bittrex exchange account, which he can no longer access. Bittrex Support has also failed to answer his support tickets. Another user stated that their account has been disabled for more than three days without warning or reason. This user also complained about the platform failing to answer their support ticket. Bittrex's failure to answer support tickets is a complaint echoed by several users with closed accounts.
Another user implied that the bans may be issued based on nationalities, as the user confirmed that over 3,000 Iranian accounts have been deactivated without warning or reason. In Telegram cryptocurrency groups, the overwhelming majority of affected users seem to be from either Syria, India, Russia, Pakistan, or Turkey. Several affected users confirmed that they used verified accounts which rules out the possibility of this issue being a KYC/AML problem.
Several threads have also been started on popular Bitcoin-related forums regarding the issue.
So far, Bittrex has neither acknowledged nor responded to the overwhelming amount of complaints. There are also no items on bittrex.com/news addressing these concerns. Users noted that sign-in attempts to the Bittrex Slack channel have also failed. The Bittrex Facebook page simply redirects users to file support tickets.
Bittrex’s Twitter page is equally silent, as the team has only responded to one single Tweet sent by a user who was complaining about the issue.
The fact that a popular cryptocurrency exchange platform decided to shut down accounts, seemingly at random, is highly unusual and has raised several concerns within the community. What is even more strange is that Bittrex is also preventing users from accessing their Slack channel.
Unfortunately, there are plenty more strange happenings afoot, as far as Bittrex is concerned. According to the popular blogger of all things crypto-related, "TheCryptoSyndicate", an internal mistake at Bittrex caused a platform-wide selloff of altcoins. In turn, this triggered declines on all other major exchanging platforms.
TheCryptoSyndicate has speculated that these bizarre events could be due to an error pertaining to exchange fees. Bittrex could have accidentally dumped the fees they have collected on every transaction all at once, which converted them to bitcoin and caused the price of altcoin to fall.
After the historic collapse of the Mt. Gox exchange a few years ago, fear and exasperation regarding the strange events at Bittrex have obviously caused alarm among members of the crypto community. What makes users even more agitated is that a user does not actually have control over the private key to their funds. The exchange controls your private key. Thus, in the event of something going wrong, the users stand to lose all their assets.
During the Mt. Gox collapse in 2014, users lost access to 850,000 bitcoins that were controlled by the platform. Later, 200,000 bitcoins were recovered. Despite this recovery, the losses still total a staggering 650,000 bitcoin, the equivalent of $3.5 billion. Given this extreme loss and the bizarre happenings at Bittrex, users are understandably worried.
One user stated that he currently has six bitcoin (the equivalent of $30,000) in his Bittrex exchange account, which he can no longer access. Bittrex Support has also failed to answer his support tickets. Another user stated that their account has been disabled for more than three days without warning or reason. This user also complained about the platform failing to answer their support ticket. Bittrex's failure to answer support tickets is a complaint echoed by several users with closed accounts.
Another user implied that the bans may be issued based on nationalities, as the user confirmed that over 3,000 Iranian accounts have been deactivated without warning or reason. In Telegram cryptocurrency groups, the overwhelming majority of affected users seem to be from either Syria, India, Russia, Pakistan, or Turkey. Several affected users confirmed that they used verified accounts which rules out the possibility of this issue being a KYC/AML problem.
Several threads have also been started on popular Bitcoin-related forums regarding the issue.
So far, Bittrex has neither acknowledged nor responded to the overwhelming amount of complaints. There are also no items on bittrex.com/news addressing these concerns. Users noted that sign-in attempts to the Bittrex Slack channel have also failed. The Bittrex Facebook page simply redirects users to file support tickets.
Bittrex’s Twitter page is equally silent, as the team has only responded to one single Tweet sent by a user who was complaining about the issue.
The fact that a popular cryptocurrency exchange platform decided to shut down accounts, seemingly at random, is highly unusual and has raised several concerns within the community. What is even more strange is that Bittrex is also preventing users from accessing their Slack channel.
Unfortunately, there are plenty more strange happenings afoot, as far as Bittrex is concerned. According to the popular blogger of all things crypto-related, "TheCryptoSyndicate", an internal mistake at Bittrex caused a platform-wide selloff of altcoins. In turn, this triggered declines on all other major exchanging platforms.
TheCryptoSyndicate has speculated that these bizarre events could be due to an error pertaining to exchange fees. Bittrex could have accidentally dumped the fees they have collected on every transaction all at once, which converted them to bitcoin and caused the price of altcoin to fall.
After the historic collapse of the Mt. Gox exchange a few years ago, fear and exasperation regarding the strange events at Bittrex have obviously caused alarm among members of the crypto community. What makes users even more agitated is that a user does not actually have control over the private key to their funds. The exchange controls your private key. Thus, in the event of something going wrong, the users stand to lose all their assets.
During the Mt. Gox collapse in 2014, users lost access to 850,000 bitcoins that were controlled by the platform. Later, 200,000 bitcoins were recovered. Despite this recovery, the losses still total a staggering 650,000 bitcoin, the equivalent of $3.5 billion. Given this extreme loss and the bizarre happenings at Bittrex, users are understandably worried.