Topic: Recent events should make you withdraw all your coins to your own wallet: Part 2 - page 4. (Read 1475 times)

Just did quick search and it's poloniex which have such fee[1]. They call it "administrative fee", although it's not clear the duration to be classified as dormant account or whether it applies to all coin. BitFinex don't have such fee according to their FAQ[2].


Are you sure you remember it correctly? Their website still show page for Dogecoin[3].

[1] https://support.poloniexus.com/hc/en-us/articles/360035354512-Poloniex-US-FAQ
[2] https://support.bitfinex.com/hc/en-us/articles/213919589-What-fees-does-Bitfinex-charge
[3] https://www.exodus.com/dogecoin-wallet

Which is obviously nonsense. Once they've set up the necessary systems to create a wallet for a specific coin which can handle deposits and withdrawals for customers, it takes absolutely no effort on their end other than to let the software continue to run. Just another one of the many ways that centralized exchanges rip off their users.

Really? Did the wallet have a seed phrase you could export and recover your coins somewhere else? Cause otherwise that's just outright theft.

I think, and I could be wrong, it was either Poloniex or Bitfinex which did this. Used to get emails about it for crapcoins I'd have (yes, yes, I was a noob in 2016 too).

They called it a maintenance fee, but I believed it wasn't for profit. It was only for coins that were low network usage that they were thinking to delist (since maintaining the wallets when nodes were frequently down was a hassle). They'd only levy the fee on dormant coins, the idea was to get as many users as possible to withdraw out so they could just delist and close down the maintenance.

One wallet turned CEX I definitely remember was Exodus. A few years back they decided to drop Dogecoin and if you didn't withdraw yours before upgrading to their new version, you'd simply not see your Doge anymore.

AFAIK there aren't CEX which force you to withdraw your coin. But IIRC there are few CEX (don't remember which one) which charge fee if you store coin for long time on their service. Although it's likely they do it to earn more profit rather than convincing people to use non-custodial wallet. Kraken CEO also being honest they cannot protect you if government is after you[1].

[1] https://twitter.com/jespow/status/1494462097161220104?t=EWO80zZlf6wZp4HpkXQEhA&s=19

Plenty of DEXs effectively do this, and have no way to store your coins with them. I don't believe any centralized exchanges this, though.

Bingo. Using these platforms is simply replacing an insured and relatively safe fiat bank with an uninsured and wildly risky crypto bank.

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It's now emerging that in return for their $250 million bailout of BlockFi, FTX will be acquiring a stake in BlockFi. I can't really think of a bigger red flag than when the entity holding your coins is auctioning off themselves to remain solvent.

Even if the exchange was objectively better in every aspect, I'd avoid it out of principle. I've also talked about it before, but if an exchange basically didn't allow you, and forced you to remove your coins from their platform, i.e doesn't have a wallet for long term storage (long term being any more than 24 hours) I'd have much more respect for a platform that did that. Since, a the mere fact you advertise users to use your wallet software, is poor security practice to begin with.

Yeah, there's hardly any security checks that need to be done. It sounds awfully alike a bank, where they need to do these checks. The thing is, a lot of the checks are easier with fiat. It just stinks of insurance for me. If they were in troubling times, I bet they wouldn't look after their customers, and just fold like the others before them.

Those who act like that are not a true long term investor but they just invest for fun or only to try if they really can earn something on hodling bitcoins as on what they heard and see. They are those people that keeps on watching their balance at all times and they seem to be uneasy. If there are dumps in the price they are also the first one that will panic and they can sell their possessions.

In hodling, you can actually earn something, the same as when they lend or stake their bitcoins on some platforms but the goodness of doing it, is that you are the ones who manage it. You have your keys and seeds with you so it is much safer.

I mean, it's obviously bullshit. Unless they are asking you to provide a selfie holding a piece of paper with your withdrawal address on it every time you want to withdraw (which they obviously aren't) any "security checks" can be automated and take place in a few seconds. Things like checking your IPs, checking for suspicious log ins or account activity, etc. They can require 2FA codes or a link sent to your email, again which can be automated to happen at any time of day or night and take a few seconds. Plenty of other exchanges and services manage it. Holding coins for two business days for "security checks" (which could be up to 6 actual days over weekends and holidays) is obviously just to give them as much warning as possible for withdrawals since they run a fractional reserve with apparently a very small amount in reserve. Explains why they've just had to take out a $250 million loan to cover all the customers who are withdrawing in the light of the Celsius insolvency.

There is no situation in which I should have to swap bitcoin for some inferior altcoin just so I don't get hammered with withdrawal fees. A fee of 1 sat/vbyte is sufficient to get confirmed within the hour >90% of the time. Exchanges charging tens of thousands of sats for something which should cost ~200 sats are stealing from you. Being forced to pay exchange fees to exchange to an altcoin you don't want just so you can withdraw it is no better.

These platforms have some conditions in their TOS, which make their position in court better than many users. They also know the slow pace of judicial procedures you need a lot of money and therefore they will not hesitate to close your account if they find any problem or violation of the terms of service (even if They let you use it)

Some platforms leave high withdrawal fees to force the user to leave his money, so look for a coin with low withdrawal fees^[1], exchange your coins to that coin, send it to a platform that gives you lower  BTC withdrawal fees, withdraw your bitcoins.

[1] https://withdrawalfees.com/

Right. Although, I'd go a stretch further than that. To mitigate the risk as much as possible, you should be selling in increments, rather than all at once. Fees might be more depending on the exchange, and whether they charge you to deposit, as well as obviously fees for selling, and potentially withdrawing. However, if a exchange is that restrictive I'd probably recommend not using them anyway.

Anyway, back to the point; selling in increments at least mitigates the risk if the exchange seizes trading during the time you're depositing, even if only for until you buy/sell. I know a lot of users aren't going to have the patience for that, but I'd seriously consider doing it considering the amount of exchanges that have pulled this sort of thing now.

I think this cements my point even more. Alright, my recommendation might not be suitable for traders looking to make the most money for their buck, but it's the safest way. Personally, I wouldn't be using an exchange that requires holding your coins for security checks.

Almost, always a indicator of someone who doesn't really understand Bitcoin, and things it should be leveraged to earn more. Don't get me wrong, there will be people who understand the risk of that, and will actually benefit from it. However, it does make me uncomfortable a little bit when I see newer users asking these sort of questions.

FUD

That's right. I've also observed that myself. Rather than safely keep them with their private keys, they sent them in all kinds of centralized sites and fake decentralized finance platforms and fake decentralized exchanges. They invested them in gambling sites, lending platforms, liquidity pools, and so forth. I mean, many must have also profited from it, but things could go wrong anytime. Crypto's history doesn't fall short of all kinds of events that should serve as warnings.

I don't know, perhaps some are really in a hurry to get rich. Or perhaps they're simply greedy.

That’s poorly managed exchange and I feel sad for the employees who might have been working hard for them. It’s insane, if they had set up of “crypto” exchanger then they should have already forecasted that in the catastrophic event such as the current bearish market how they are going to manage the central funds, companies revenue and employee salaries. Everything should have been pre-planned before taking vigours actions.

As a m’n individual I have my own set of rules. If I’m investing into crypto then I definitely know crypto is going dump itself at some point and I will have to go to stealth mode! The actions are harsh.

In addition to this, they are reason for the traders aggression and sell off. Anyone who got the tip that they will be halting the withdrawals would instantly go transfer the funds.

Illogical to force that rule anyways, they will not be removed from the court orders considering the whole scenario and their deeds.

I don't disagree, but as I said in my previous post, the outcome is the same, regardless of the reason behind why people are leaving their coins with third parties, be it convenience, laziness, greed, impatience, lack of knowledge, etc. If you leave your coins with a third party, that third party could go bankrupt resulting in your losing everything, regardless of how reputable or trustworthy you think that third party is. It can happen to these lending platforms, but it can also happy to centralized exchanges.

Absolutely. Take a look at something like Coinbase's SEC filings, which explicitly state that if anything happens to Coinbase, all its users will be treated as "unsecured creditors", meaning any coins you have on Coinbase will be used to pay off their debts and liquidations, you will not get your coins back, and there is nothing you can do about it.

I think it is important to note that bitcoin hasn't done this. Bitcoin is still a peer to peer currency. It is these centralized scam platforms and get-rich-quick users who buy bitcoin only to try to make more fiat who are doing this.

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It has just come to my attention that BlockFi is closed today for the Juneteenth holiday, and that will not be processing any withdrawals: https://nitter.net/BlockFi/status/1537105514399670273

Why? Has the bitcoin network shutdown? Have miners stopped mining? No, of course not. Seems very much like they are stalling for time to try to claw back some of their risky investments so they can refill their wallets for the ongoing onslaught of people trying desperately to withdraw their coins. I suspect the next thing will be random bugs and errors preventing withdrawals (like Binance's "stuck transaction" nonsense).

Edit: I stand corrected on this last point: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.60404376. Still doesn't make sense to me that a bitcoin based company can't process any transactions on federal holidays. And people are totally fine leaving their coins on a platform which only works business hours? Crazy.

You are right and so is the OP. I believe I must have felt that way too sometimes that earning from your Bitcoin stash is some sort of a good Idear instead of just HODLing in your personal wallet but seeing what is happening and can still happen to other exchanges and staking/lending sites, I wouldn't want to amp up the risk of losing everything through that means. I think what has happened will change some people's mind about this and do it the proper way.

To me, what this makes me wonder is how BTC has progressed on the basis of its market becoming a kind of financial casino that the whitepaper wanted to run away from.

From the idea of a P2P currency, apart from BTC, thousands of centralized currencies were created and are exchanged for it in search of the quick profit in centralised exchanges, and to top it off lately with an emphasis on leverage: "borrow against your Bitcoin". But in order to borrow you have to give up your private keys, just as you have to give up your private keys in order to get a measly interest.

I would say that many of those who have seen their funds frozen in Celsius have invested because they have seen the Youtuber of the moment, hoping to make a lot of money and not so much because they have an alternative for their savings that cannot be confiscated by anyone if they take minimum safety measures.

Those of us who have some idea of the subject will never have a significant part of our BTC holdings in exchanges.


Like it or not, most retail investors are impulsive people who look to bitcoin or any other investment for a magical way out of their shitty lives, and their way of thinking doesn't usually involve a boring strategy along the lines of: buy bitcoin, store it in a hardware wallet and don't worry about the price in 5 years.

The problem with some is that they simply can't wait. They simply can't just patiently wait. It seems a lot simply cannot relax. They cannot stay put. They're antsy with their Bitcoin. They have ants in their pants!

How many times have we read posts asking how they could earn from their Bitcoin? How many times have we heard people saying they'd rather invest their Bitcoin and earn a little than just HODL it and earn nothing?

A lot are saying they want to make the most of their Bitcoin. They just can't let it sleep in their cold storage. They'd rather stake or lend them because they're not spending them anyway; they're keeping them long-term anyway.

I hope people will finally learn from this!

Worthy advice.

It is never easy to control emotion, greed, fear, leverage when you are in pain. The motivation to cover and equalize your loss is big that will be cause of worse things. Your advice is very relevant. Withdraw coins from exchange to own wallet will help two things

• Avoid any bad thing happens on that exchange
• Avoid uncontrollable, emotional orders from your side

It is good to avoid forced liquidations and become holders, wait for sunshine again. Additionally, it gives you time to switch off your computers and do some outdoors activities, enjoy your life.

Ah, so that is what whammied the crypto prices yesterday. No wonder then.

I was commenting in another thread about some Chinese banks experiencing run-offs, well you don't really have to look further than these "banks" aka. interest platforms that are also experiencing run-offs but they are having a definite impact on the prices of all cryptocurrencies as a result.

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There was a gambling project that I was supposed to launch 7 months ago with some other people using some borrowed money from investors and personal funds. Looking back, and although I could not see it at the time, I am really glad it did not end up happening because then for sure we would be guarranteed to be insolvent from run-offs too (we returned all the borrowed money to the investors) and our personal reputations ruined.


Looks like a cue that BTC will fall to $11K in a week or so. I don't know.

One thing that I find pretty cool at this stage is that when you borrow $100,000 and can't afford to pay in this market, you're going to have to worry and get caught, but if you go into the millions, hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars and are not able to repay, the one who is worried is not you, but the lender. I also just heard that Solend is controlling a whale wallet through voting. This is also seen as a violation of the investor's right to manage assets. It is really bad to see a decentralized algorithm central but controlled.