Topic: Fiat out of HitBTC (Read 1547 times)

Thanks for replying. Yeah that was my plan basically, arbitrage between Coinbase Exchange and HitBTC. For now I definitely don't feel safe risking it. I just got very lucky with Coin.mx, I requested an ACH transfer to my bank account on July 18 and it posted 3 days later, literally only a few hours before the exchange was forced to close.

I feared that hitbtc wouldnt die that easy. So here are my two suggestions:

1. short:

DONT.

2. long:

hitbtc appeared out of nowhere with a truly incredible trading volume (take that literally).
in the beginning (2014) there were many arbitrage opportunities as the prices on hitbtc would swing +/- some % on a more or less monthly rythm. Verifying was easy and straight forward and registering bank accounts took 2 days.
Yes I made much money there. back then.
Then the first hickups started with the introduction of new "AML prerequisites" and already verified accounts of the highest tier even had to be re-verified.
I did jump through that loop. On general everything was still working.
Also the official hitbtc thread here on bitcointalk* was closed and moved to their own forum.

In the beginning it was a company in Panama City (yes Panama...) residing in a shared office building.
Then it moved to northern Europe.
(Verification documents had to be sent to the adress of a translation office in Talin (Estonia)) - They got kind of upset with me when I phoned and emailed that office about their affiliation with hitbtc...
While their "office" was located in a shared office in Norway or Denmark (not sure right now and irrelevant, because it was just a letter box anyway).
Then the second wave of re-verification started. All of my connected bank accounts were de-verified and verification was practically impossible. They actually suggested getting out by buying bitcoin and withdrawing that. In the end that is exactly what I did. I lost about 600 - 700 Euro on the way, but learned my lesson (again):

If it sounds to good to be true,
it is not true.

So, is hitbtc.com a scam?
I still dont think so, but it is not working as planned/advertised either.
The explanation is probably as simple as it is hard to fix:

Bank Account.

An exchange has by nature an extremely high in- and outflow of money (fiat that is). This produces very high costs for the bank running the account, as they themselves have to adhere to AML regulations which are becoming more strict every few months. So a customer who moves huge amounts of cash in tiny pieces (hundreds of active customers) like an exchange is simply a nuisance and a financial loss for any bank.

I do not think that hitbtc.com will ever be able to fix this, because they simply can not afford it.
They just stay afloat because the servers are still running, but that is already it.

They might feel be tempted to cover their losses (which they probably have already incurred) by scamming a few newbies** on their way out to nirvana, so:

IT´S BROKEN.
STAY AWAY.
DONT GO THERE.
TELL YOUR FRIENDS.

*...It did already contain interesting questions about their trading volume and how it suddenly dropped as criticism here and probably on reddit got too loud. They also were very evasive about where their offices actually were located.
**...no offense intended. we were all newbies at some point.

Update:

My account was verified today, waited 11 days, which isn't that fast but much quicker than 5 weeks 

However I also received the classic HitBTC e-mail:


I definitely won't be depositing anything whatsoever into their exchange until withdrawals are working.

Haven't heard back yet, what I sent them was some additional info on how to send a wire transfer to my bank
Their reply was


Lol at the rep's name https://www.google.com/search?q=Paola+Balzano

And now I'm waiting for a reply to this

Any updates upon the process ahead?
Seems they are just wasting time of both ends.

Finally got a reply from them took 6 days though, I sent the e-mail out on July 3

Still not verified

Why give yourself a headache over this, there are many options available online whereby you can withdraw btc to fiat.

The most I'd risk at first is 1 BTC, sell it and see how long it takes to get fiat

I'm not for certain it's a scam yet, you see some complaints but you also see posts like these:

---

I was referring to LBC



But yes this generally holds true, right now prices are about 10.6% higher

BTCe 266.6
HitBTC 294.98

If people are talking like that I would not send any coins there hoping to get out fiat. that is how Gox started, and look where that ended.

The price being that high seems like a giant red flag to me. If you could get out cash, people doing arbitrage would be all over it and the price would be going down. If you can't get out cash, the price can just go sky high like Gox did because cash there is worthless. People that bought coins for "$1000" and were able to withdraw their coins ended up in a much better situation than people that sold their coins there and got "$1000" that they couldn't get out, same thing could be happening here.

if these arent ringing some enormous alarm bells in your head ill do it for you; those two parts by themselves are incredibly shady, especially since theyre offering to buy your coins 12% above exchange prices. just use circle or something, the potential reward for the shadiness of that isnt worth it.

imo at a first glance, not legit.

Yeah, I've been selling some coin on there too at 12% above the Btc-E price. Takes awhile though, I'd rather just sell them all at once on an exchange preferably on HitBTC if they aren't a scam, then I'll get the highest price 

How about if you try local bitcoin and find someone in your city that could cash you out, i wouldn't bother using a site that needs all type of verifications to get you a deposit just look for a trusted trader in local bitcoins and your good to go.

I'd like to cash out some coins and would like to sell them on HitBTC

Is it true it's nearly impossible to withdraw in fiat? I've read several posts about them and this seems to be the case for everyone:


They 'unverify' your account and say you should just buy crypto (at a huge loss). Right now I'm waiting for my account to be verified but is taking forever, I've tried contacting them on here, through e-mail, the ticket system, and even through Facebook but I haven't heard anything back as of yet

Basically I'm just wondering, are they legit?