Topic: Legal Action against Bittrex exchange: a crowd funding proposal (Read 1529 times)

More than 1 year passed and my portfolio diminished from more than 50k to below 1k

P.S: My account is still disable

Bittrex has frozen my account. I can't withdrawal - tho I am FULLY VERIFIED.

It's been like this for over 2 weeks. Almost a week ago I submitted a ticket and got an auto reply.

THIS IS INSANE! And no, I am not a U.S Citizen.

Anyone else?

I think it may be class action time......

Bittrex currently has a liability of roughly $1,000,000-$10,000,000 denominated in Byteball bytes to users of its exchange who held balances of Byteball bytes during the various official bytes distributions. While Bittrex would not be required to give users with bytes airdrops to bytes holders of tokens on new, independent projects, Bittrex undoubtedly received its users' distributions of bytes on bytes and wrongfully took it for itself. This could have contributed to price depression as well. Bittrex owes me 36 GB ($10,000) and I am considering a lawsuit sometime in 2018 if the amount becomes significant enough for me. I would be open to joining with others with the same issue in a class action lawsuit. Please contact me if you have the same issue.

As much as I do not want to believe, Bittrex seems to be trying to follow all the US laws and rules. Those recent accounts desactivations is the result of an IRS effort to prevent people of tax evasion. Otherwise Bittrex will close their services and I dont think any legal actions can change that.

I do agree that something is going on with Bittrex, especially recently. Though looking at the overall picture it does appear that there are things going on behind the screen. With Polo updating their user agreements after a rash of complaints, the IRS going after Coinbase, and the SECs involvement with the DAO I'm sure that the Fedral Gov is doing things with the crypto exchanges that are located in the US. It wouldn't surprise me that with the withdrawal of a large group from Polo to trade on Bittrex that the Fed Gov is doing things with them as well. Also, with the company being privately held with offices in Las Vegas as well as Seattle(?) that there are things on the business side that is hitting the owner that probably wasn't thought of previously. Just my 2 satoshis.

Without a doubt the government is setting up to tax the living crap out of bitcoin gains. To do that they need to be able to track the users and have a verified identity and address. IMO this is long overdue. People not paying taxes is a problem.

This is truly horrifying. Look at the last post Bittrex has on their Facebook page.

Every 5 minutes someone is posting a new comment begging for Bittrex to review their support ticket and unlock their funds. There are thousands of people affected by this scam.

Every tweet that is made by either Bittrex or its employees gets hundreds of comments of victims pleading for help to unlock their funds.

I never used the services of this exchange. There are many people who say this is a good resource. Many people have many opinions. It seems to me that the best option is your warning. I doubt that you can get your money back. But you can help others avoid losses.

Does Bittrex publish their cold wallet storage address in order to prove solvancy?

They say it is an MTGox situation here:
https://www.cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-altcoin-exchange-bittrex-eyed-with-suspicion-due-to-thousands-of-mysterious-account-closings

bad news

But I think this is not about a software flaw, it is about greed and abuse. They should be present in a court, they have gambled with user's deposits. An exchange operator is not allowed to trade on the same exchange it operates. It is conflict of interests and abuse of user deposits. Now they have blocked out people to avoid withdrawals which can not accomplish.

I appreciate your commitment. It is worth mentioning that Bittrex operates globally and it is committing fraud against people from all around the globe. Now to take legal action in Seattle, it is necessary to have an agent in  Washington to hire a lawyer and submit a lawsuit.

I think people who has suffered by Bittrex are ready to participate and cover the costs by making donations. I am ready to donate up to 1000$ on my part.

I'm serious on the point of gathering clear, set-by-step chronological evidence that presents the case (single or multiple) in a logical way. I'm not knowledgeable in legal matters but I am certain this is the only way to proceed properly. Act swiftly, documenting all the steps with screenshots-email comms, support transcripts, anything.

It's not evidence that I need, obviously, but that OP needs if he wants to pursue legal action. I was simply trying to help him on his way. This forum and its users won't be able to arbitrate no matter how much evidence is posted here and nothing will happen no matter if "people are going crazy everywhere".

As I've mentioned before, my account is strongly verified, long time ago and I think if it was about law enforcers who may push for more restricted verification process, they would ban deposits for the accounts of interest and not withdrawal! They are little liars, Bittrex owners, they use this as a leverage to fulfil their interests and nothing more. Putting your hands on millions of dollars of users' funds, saying 'We are so cautious about law enforcement and regulators that have blocked your access to your assets' it is just obscenity, they are using our deposits to trade in the boom times.

I think what they're doing is trying to save their but in case enforcers accuse them of laundering funds. They are requiring ID's to verify the identity of account owner's to point to someone in case this scenario happens.

So as long as the source of your coins are from legitimate sources no need to worry about it.

Asia's wallet/exchange provider "coins" are doing this account verification from the start. They are even asking for a selfie with your ID's

they've basically instituted mandatory verification (with passport/driver's license + selfie -- good recipe for identity theft) for accounts valued higher than $1,000. with such a low threshold, their entire userbase is now basically subject to these new rules. they didn't give any prior notification that this would happen. and with a userbase as large as theirs, i imagine it could take months to verify everyone.

in the meantime, no one can trade/hedge value on their coins or withdraw their money. and people with previously verified accounts are also having their accounts disabled, which is pretty fishy. whatever is happening, it's being carried out by bittrex in an extremely unprofessional manner. i'd be curious to know what the rights of creditors are in this situation, when the custodian is seemingly blocking access to funds based on arbitrary conditions, which is also causing significant financial damages to victims, because they cannot withdraw or trade as normal.

they must be getting a lot of pressure from regulators/law enforcement. their twitter also says they are based in seattle... is that true? i wonder how wise that is given that washington state is one of the only states that regulates cryptocurrencies, hence why bitfinex and poloniex stopped offering services to washington residents.

Obviously, my account, a verified account,  has been disabled without any excuse and I have not access to my funds to withdraw or use in trade. I have explained the details in the OP, and it is very important to take the following facts in consideration:
1- I am not alone, possibly hundreds or thousands of people are experiencing a same problem with Bittrex.
2- It happened at the very moment price surge started.
3- Before this happens, occasionally, they have put my wallets, like others, in a temporarily disabled state named 'maintenance mode' again in the critical market periods.
my suggestion: This site is  a sophisticated scam that shows its face to portions of their user base in critical market situations.

I afraid there is nothing in their terms of service to allow them seizing deposits and if they think they can use it to commit fraud, they are simply wrong, they can't! Actually it makes everything for them much worse, it is a more serious crime to convince people sign a fraudulent agreement in which they give you money and the right to not paying it back in anyway while you are pretending to be an exchange, an escrow.

Bittrex has used the title "Exchange" and shamelessly continues using it now, they are not allowed to put ambiguous statements in their ToS misleadingly. It is not how things work in the financial services sector.

You cant be serious. Bittrex just blocked thousand of accounts for no reason at all, people are going crazy everywhere, and you dont know what he is talking about?

https://twit       ter.com/hashtag/bittrexexchange?f=tweets&vertical=default&src=hash

How much evidence do you need? Take a look at the "scam"-section of this forum.

edit: srsly? this forum is blocking links to TWITTER?

@OP. Before you even think of pursuing legal action, I'd advise you to clarify what exactly happened (I can't understand what happened from your first post) and then strengthen your case first with evidence. Lots of it. And if you're talking about getting others to come under a single complaint, you're talking about class action lawsuits. Now I do not know the law well enough but I am aware that Poloniex recently strengthened their Terms of Use to explicitly say that any user who signs up and uses their platform waives their right to such legal action. My strong suspicion is that Bittrex is no different. By signing up and using these exchanges, you probably signed off a lot of rights, if the ToS stands.

I'm not here to argue about the ethics of such agreements, just here to warn you that you should prepare yourself with clear evidence before you can do anything. Also, I strongly urge you to remain polite and courteous in your communications with them. I've seen your posts on other threads and that's not going to help you resolve anything quicker, trust me.

I see no reason for joy. This is only one of many exchanges. This can happen with everyone. Where is the guarantee that you will not have coins in the accounts of another exchange which will do well? One of the problems of bitcoin is that we are forced to make transactions based on trust alone. Will always be a lot of scams that want to steal your coins.

Could it be that they are under scrutiny from LE and such? This may explain the recent shady behavior. Too many accusations against them recently, glad I don't have any coins in my Bitterex accounts.