Topic: SCAM EXCHANGE MONITOR: BestChange (Read 1434 times)

That should be the case, of course Best_Change must be responsible for what partners like (OpenChange) do, to their users.

What is certain is that complaints about the behavior of partners on the Best_Change web have often happened, I don't know for sure the rules made by Best_Change against partners, before they register and operate on Best_Change, in fact user complaints continue to exist every year, unpleasant and detrimental, the actions of partners on the Best_Change web.

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I think to prevent the same thing from happening again in the future, I suggest the Best_Change team, learn a little from Binance, even though Best_Change is already operating earlier than Binance, I think the way Binance accepts broker partners, is very professional, they prioritize Reputation and crypto users.

For example:
Of course, after all the problems are resolved, no one is harmed, they are responsible for everything.
Of course BestChange didn't let the exchange run away without solving the problem.
I think some strict rules are worth implementing in the future.

Surely this does not learn from the mistakes they have made, remove current problem exchanger, maybe if maintained, not only you, everyone here will blame them, enter the black hole for the second time.

We are not “happy” with this practice, but you need to take it into account that in some cases we do allow withholding commissions or fines according to the terms of the exchange, provided that this is clearly described in the rules of the exchanger, is clearly communicated to the user and there is no possibility to manipulate the wording. The maximal amount of a “fine” accepted in OTC-segment and by us is not more than 10 percent of the transaction. You also need to take it into account that if this practice happens more and more often in an exchanger, we will raise a question about a full delisting of the service, that’s why they won’t violate this option although they have it in almost any questionable situation.
In this specific case a blatant violation of the exchanger’s rules happened, the user had been informed but deliberately send a risky operation and refused to pass KYC-procedure necessary by the conditions of this service.
The very practice of fine although being very unpopular among users, often has real grounds for its existence. This is due to the increased risks of blocking part of the receipts or even the entire exchange service account in the custodial wallet they use. Thus, they try to reduce their losses from potential sanctions for such transfers in the future.



Most likely, the user was generally satisfied with such a compromise decision and removed it on his own accord, we don’t track such situations. We have just checked actions of our moderators on the page of OpenChange and the last removal of a review was in November 2021,  due to a high risk of a “positive feedback” to be fake.
Such conclusions can be made against the backdrop of this comment:


We check many parametres, including the legal aspects of their legitimacy, before adding exchangers in our listing. The fact that we are not legally bound with them doesn’t mean that we do not know anything about them or that they are illegal.


For a general user, it does not matter in what country this or that exchanger is registered. The aspects you describe are written in the rules of exchange, you either agree with them and finish the transaction, or refuse and leave the website with unacceptable for you conditions. There is nothing extraordinary in the service conditions of the exchanger. We make sure that various conditions and rules do not go beyond the boundaries of reasonable and legal.



In the context of the current generally accepted norms, we do not see anything reprehensible and illegal in the actions of OpenChange, so the question of their exclusion has not yet been raised. And the questions of whether this or that practice is ethical, are very subjective. However, we don’t exclude the possibility of their removal, if the community (and not several people on bitcointalk) will decide that this practice in this context is incorrect
And if this is a "trick question", then would like to disappoint all conspiracy theorists, our relationship with exchangers in no way depends on the number and size of fines, we do not receive "kickbacks" from this. Commission rewards are formed only from their standard income on the difference in the value of assets, and not from other methods of financing. Therefore, we are not "happy", deep down we are "sad" from such a practice, but these are the general rules of the OTC market.



Differences between objective and subjective are in the presence of supporting facts. If you conducted some kind of investigation (at least a formal one), then in theory you could call your position objective. But based on your personal feelings, you can only write a subjective position. This is not an insult or belittlement of your merits, this is just a statement of the fact that what you described is your own feeling based not on any facts, but only on thoughts about it. And thoughts, in fact, are erroneous, but this is already beyond the context of the discussion of objectivity and subjectivity.



We guess you misunderstood us. We were saying that we almost never delete negative reviews and claims, because they are the most painful points of communication. Even when exchangers “beg” us, saying that the reviews have no ground and they are “cute and cuddly”. Everyone has a right to speak, even if somebody does not like this opinion. We can only “clear” the message from the most offensive expressions and blatant lie, without touching upon the essence of the message.
As for fake positive reviews, we regularly delete them in big numbers. It’s hard to tell who exactly ordered these reviews  - the beneficiary, manager, careless operator or even competitor, that’s why we do not have punishment for such fake reviews, however, it would be wrong to leave this on our website, that’s why we remove this.
We do not reveal the number of deletions and specific exchangers, this is internal information which can be misinterpreted, but this does happen, and in larger scale than we would like to. But this is like in the rest of the internet —the reviews are a circumstantial parameter of evaluation today, although we do our best to leave only maximally objective and confirmed ones on our website.


Do you worry about that?


What, according to you, has our service done to deserve the “red tag”?
In this specific case, as we described earlier, the user agreed with the exchange rules before making the operation, and he one-sidedly decided that he may not fulfill them only because, according to his evaluation, they are not just, this is a serious violation not only of exchange rules, but also of logic and ethical norms.
If somebody isn’t satisfied with the rules of the service, it would be logical to avoid this service and not to impose it with your rules and make scenes, isn’t it?

This is really so, and we have enough of being their “lawyer”, we will try to invite them into this subject for a discussion, so that they would reply for their practice themselves. And so that you ask them, not us, your questions about the details of what has happened.

In terms of compliance with the rules adopted in the OTC community, they did not commit any formal violations. At the same time, Janyah201 himself violated a number of principles of the exchanger, but the bitcointalk community stood up to protect him, because it’s so easy to share the position of the “victim” - everyone can be in his shoes, and this “bourgeoisie” is guilty of all sins in advance - “all they do is stealing money." This one-sided position is very biased and condones "consumer terrorism" when, under the pressure of risk to OUR reputation, you want to influence other entities that are not under our control in any way. But at the same time, we really have some reserve of power for influence, which you want to use for your own selfish purposes, threatening our reputation.
What do you want? So that we delist the exchanger because you and a few other users do not like their rules and practices? What is it, if not dyspathia? Maybe we are wrong, but it looks extremely ugly. With this logic, should we list only a dozen of those who will please the regulars of the forum? Will you send us an agreed list?
Let's be objective and not cross the line of common sense. We do have influence on the exchanger, but why should we follow the logic of a few people from this topic, and not the rules that have been established over a decade of exchangers’ work? Because you're threatening us with a few "red tags"? Such behavior does not suit the forum and the local community, we hope that most of the participants in the discussion do not adhere to such logic and are able to devide the facts.


Thank you for your opinion. As for the feedback system, we are already trying to modernize what we have. But a complete qualitative change in the feedback system itself (something similar to trustpilot) will not happen until our entire system is updated. We have been doing this work for a long time already, but we are not able to give the exact timing of implementation - maybe six months, maybe a year.

As for listing rules, we will discuss with representatives of exchangers the possibility of toughening some aspects of listing for their colleagues and competitors, as well as if it is right to use “fines” as a practice. We’ll see what can be done about it to find a consensus between bitcointalk and exchangers communities.

If we all come to the conclusion that OpenChange did exceed its authority and abused its position, then a decision will be made to exclude it and/or force them to adapt the rules of service in order to continue cooperation.

I don't think that negative feedback for BestChange would be correct use of trust system, because they didn't do any transaction directly between openchange and it's customer.
It would be much more correctly to first give them neutral feedback and see if they update their review system in something that isn't misleading.
I left my neutral feedback today and I think LoyceV has done something similar, so I am hoping to see improvements soon.
We don't want to see things like openchange scam behavior happening again.

The way I see it the non-transparent feedback system is an intricate part of the reason why Best Change users click affiliate links on their website. Whether it deserves a red-tag or not, without Best Change effectively vouching for exchange websites (including Open Exchange) via their trust/feedback system (and then making money from them with their affiliate links), others that ended up losing financially under dubious Terms and Conditions could have avoided those loses.

Best Change still have time to do the right thing.

You are right @Best_Change, already mentioned and promised, they will review and be more careful to include 'exchanges' on their web.


Because I haven't reviewed and checked about Best_Change exchange in a long time, so not 100% know what exchange Best_Change put on their web/has good or bad reputation, which they receive and register.

If what @Janyiah201 said is true, this is very far from what @Best_Change said, at that time.


I can only hope, @Best_Change, is well received in this forum, with them correcting their past mistakes and really prioritizing exchanges that have a good reputation and can be trusted, not the other way around, this is about Best_Change's own web reputation, don't ever fall into a hole a second time, reputation is important for crypto exchange companies.

I think there will be quite a few red tags if Best Change doesn't take action, and I am referring to delisting the scam exchange. I wouldn't red tag Best Change if the scam exchange doesn't give a refund.

It seems highly unlikely there will be a full refund at all. Best Change have stated they are not financially responsible for their affiliates stealing from Best Change customers. As for Open Change, they have stolen 10% of the deposited funds (around $500 at the time) and they will probably not return it even if Best Change ask them to.

Best Change has diverted their customers to 3rd parties for exchanging their funds therefore Best Change has to look at the manner in which it is conducting business with affiliates. Best Change should define what their future plans are regarding safeguarding their customers from the dubious Terms of Service of their affiliates and how they intend to distance themselves from known scam affiliate exchanges otherwise they risk receiving multiple negative tags.

I don't call it scam but bad business practice  lack of morals and greed for the referral commission.
I bet the revenue will be the same if they didn't use the shady behavior for the reviews. Or if they get extra for doing that shady behavior not sure

I will probably go first and leave a red tag unless there is a full refund within 48 hours.

Thank you for pointing that out, yes Best Change changed the title of the thread in their reply and it continued when I replied to their post: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.60507390

I will edit my post to re-add the thread title again because Best Change should never have really changed it.

This is so rich coming from the guys who told all their members in the signature campaign that they have to either avoid discussing anything about a "special operation" or quit wearing their signature.

Facts, and not ideological differences
- a user's funds were frozen and both you and the scammer exchanged claimed it was because AML regulation, AML and FATF regulations demand that you freeze those assets and you inform the authorities which will then pursue this case
- suddenly when you face a serious backslash on the forum, AML regulations were forgotten and the SCAM exchange you're listing on your website released the funds 9contrarty to the law) taking a 10% cut, again unlawfully
- the SCAM exchange then decided to update its terms and conditions to some lunatic ones, that probably everyone who has any idea how the law works will have a heart attack from so much laughter
- you as an indexer are removing feedback you deem subjective and you're not displaying the real score those exchanges get

Since at this moment you refuse to take action against a proven lying, scamming, and unlawfully in any jurisdiction on this planet exchange, don't you think you're reaching the moment where our "subjective" evaluation might also start to take form and color, red color?


It was Best_Change that did so in their reply, which I'm also quoting but since they want to play that game I'll join

I am doing a test.

So, apparently someone has changed the title, that it doesn't appear as such from outside the tread or in the main title, but in the answers.

JollyGood, was it you?

"Re: BestChange is not a scam" appears to me from your reply.

Oh! OK. I see now. Best Change has changed the title in his reply and it appears in yours as you have quoted him.

My opinion and evaluation is objective because I am not the owner of BestChange website like you, and I was not involved in confiscation of coins like other member who reported this problem.
Let me clarify that I see no justification in keeping green positive review with I love this exchange comments, and removing red color for anything with negative conotation.
Please understand that majority of people share my opinion in this case, and it's nothing personal against BestChange.
If you don't respect this than we have a problem, and you are the one being subjective, not me.

I am interested to hear about this as well, since BestChange said they don't delete any feedback... unless this is also classified information...

And the jurisdiction according to your opinion is...... ?
And the jurisdiction according to the exchanger is.... ?

Are you happy that the exchange (Open Change) you are affiliated with have confiscated 10% of the funds of your client because he was diverted to their website as a result of clicking a link on your Best Change website?

Are you happy to continue listing Open Change on your website and are you happy to continue your affiliation with them knowing what their Terms and Conditions consist of?

Speaking of the 10% loss of funds to the client that you introduced to Open Change, can you state the commission you received from Open Change from the 10% they stole?

And do you not see the problem with allowing every exchange to nullify all negative feedback against them, regardless of whether or not the issue has actually been resolved? And if the user in question reopens the claim, the exchange can just silence it again and again and again?

What investigation? They immediately stated that mixed coins were "100% stolen" which is an impossible conclusion to reach, and then refused to elaborate whatsoever on how they reached that conclusion. There was no investigation.

So having an exchange freeze your money with no legal basis is only subjectively wrong, rather than objectively wrong?

I would say if the exchange ever asks for KYC, then it should be labelled as such.

Exactly. And allowing the exchange to turn negative feedback in to neutral feedback without actually solving the issue, without moderation, and without limits, is misleading and untrustworthy.

The current feedback on OpenChange from OP says that OpenChange have selectively scammed 10% of his deposit. They have cancelled the claim and so it appears neutral. I would say this has absolutely not been solved in OP's favor, since OpenChange have stolen 10% of his coins, and yet, the feedback is neutral.

Speaking of removing claims, what happened to OP's original feedback on OpenChange, which had them cancelling his claim 20+ times? Why has it disappeared?

Except Google's terms explicit state that they do not screen, vet, or otherwise verify search results and can hold no responsibility for search results. Your site states the following:
But you've just said that all these exchanges are "100% legal". How can you claim that if you have no idea whether or not they are legal?

AML laws and regulations differ around the world, and neither you nor OpenChange have been forthcoming about what jurisdiction they are based in, which third party payment processor they are using, and which jurisdiction that third party is based in. I've got to say though, I'm not aware of any jurisdiction which says "If you think money is illicit, keep 10% for yourself."

Allow me to focus on this case: the user wanted to exchange Bitcoin for Monero, and the exchange confiscated 10% of his funds. This has nothing to do with fiat currencies, it's clearly not AML and I bet there are no authorities involved. @Best_Change: Is confiscating 10% acceptable to you? And if so: based on which laws in which country?

I am not going to go into ideological questions, as it seems to me that at some point mine would be closer to yours than those of others who criticize in the forum, but I am going to quote myself from the other thread:


Can you explain why you still list this "service"?

This is your subjective evaluation, not based on any real data, just your opinion in the “vacuum”. Sometimes we delete hundreds of positive reviews per week, although recently we manage to bring it to exchangers that it is useful to fake reviews, and it lessens the number of fake reviews, correspondingly, it lessens the number of deleted reviews. As for claims, they are almost never deleted, except for the cases when they are fully biased and do not contain anything but lies; even from objectively misleading reviews, we try to delete just a piece of information containing lies and offensive words, leaving their essence on our website.

What you do not like personally, is that instead of “red” they become “white” doesn’t say that they are fully deleted, it’s a false idea about our website. All information is available for reading by anyone.

This is an internal classified information. But generally speaking, in the majority of cases we know about the exchangers’ beneficiars more than they would like.


This is a very controversial story because it is based on ideological differences. In a human way, we do not see anything wrong with crypto-anarchism and all its tools, but as an organization we are obliged to adhere to generally accepted norms. And in the case of exchanging cryptocurrency for fiat currencies, it loses most of its decentralized advantages.

Whether the community likes it or not, this is a reality that we all have to face. So far, cryptocurrencies are far from creating a full-fledged full-cycle economic system and imposing their principles on the world community. In a sense, today bitcoin is just a "side chain" of the US dollar, in the gateways of which AML filters are installed.

It's unfortunate that the Bestchange trust feedback is mostly from
people who joined the signature compaign and bragging about how they got paid for spreading Bestchange across bitcointalk.
The only trust feedback about the service Bestchange provide is a red one .
Wich I agree too. Letting exchanges remove the bad claims it's not good. And no morals in practicing your business

You saying you give option to users to reopen their claim or bad feedback for a business after a business removed it
How many of your users knows about this tactics ? Do they get notified by email if exchange removed the claim so they open it again ?
It's a stupid business model for your referral commission

Simply because this issue is not new and in-fact there’s already neutral feedback for reminding that there’s already same scenario happened in the past. His issue is still not concluded yet and Bestchange should be given a time to properly defend themselves or to make improvement to there operation to give more security all there customers that relying on there review for using best exchange as there business name itself.

Trying to catch up on this thread. I still don't understand why there isn't a a neutral feedback from DT referencing this discussion, even if just their replies to the situation, so as to warn others that feedback of exchanges is largely determined by exchanges, or that funds sent via a mixer may be frozen by associated exchanges. It seems like quite a relevant topic for users to be aware of imo, without needing a red tag.


I'm not convinced this is a relevant analogy. Google don't claim their links are "reliable and trusted". In fact, they regularly warn their users the opposite of this, that search results can lead to dangerous links and are not verified as safe. While I don't believe you are partly responsible for financial loss by directing to affiliate websites, there is a responsibility none the less to avoid the continuation of financial loss.

Even Google actively encourages users to report phishing websites. Sure they only deal with 20% of them it seems, but they no doubt do so as they could be held accountable if phishing websites were reported and they didn't do anything about it - especially if they were monetising from ads. Assuming you also monetise from your affiliated websites, surely there is some responsibility here to deal with these claims, even if not legal.


So because Google can profit from fraudsters, does that justify others to, including yourselves? Not really. It just means Google can afford to profit from fraudsters, as the financial consequences are merely cost of doing business with them. I don't see how Google getting away from this means that others should. You said yourself Google are slow to deal with these situations, similar to yourselves perhaps?


I think this is where part of the contradiction lies. You claim to simply be an information resource, and your t&c no doubt emphasises you're not responsibility for financial loss, but yet this information being presented as "reliable and trusted" places a heavy bias on the information you are providing. Hence it's nothing like a search engine, which does not claim searches are reliable nor trusted. Even just the information bias being removed would eradicate a lot of issues users have at present it seems, then your defence of simply being a search engine like Google would become legitimate.

When you list an exchange do you ask KYC from the exchange owner?

What is acceptable then? Confiscate the coin?
The user said that it was from mixer. Using mixer does not mean it is black money. People use mixer to break connection of their coins, mostly when they do not want a trace back.

I would personally interpret it differently. Would interpret it based on merit of their argument.whoever supportrd or opposed it.
I might not show how I interpreted though, or maybe I will. Who knows
Maybe coz I'm an oddball,
See the democracy in the forum, is a very good thing. People will have different opinion on something.

I still see BestChange to be the best reference for exchangers , though I said they were shilling(in a way, maybe not intentional).

You sure you didn't consider it based on my comment. LoL
(trying to lighten the tension a bit)
No idea TrustPilot had that feature. I got the idea whilst reading something about the lightning network basics or was it lightning network FAQs, (HTLC or Hashed TimeLock Contracts) in particular.

as the wearer of their signature, it is obviously necessary for me to write my position on this whole matter. So here is.

I personally do not see Best_Change's deliberate participation in any kind of fraud here. they do monitoring, they don't pressure anyone to use any service or even they can't guarantee that all trades will go perfectly. there are many third parties that are not under the control of BestChange. I saw in several places where they clearly indicated that they are not financially responsible for any transaction.
looking at it this way, BestChange has almost no responsibility for any transaction that takes place at the exchangers on their list. (maybe this way of seeing the situation is not the best)

Someone mentioned that this is not the first case against BestChange and one of their partners, that's true but as far as I know, most of them are solved positively mostly thanks to the authority that has BC at exchangers.

I definitely agree that the current user rating system on their service is more than bad. In a way, it is completely centralized to the detriment of ordinary users and to protect exchangers. negative experiences with some exchangers are still experiences and it is necessary that other potential users see them. even if a problem is solved, I may want to avoid that service after reading about all other experiences.
this is a big lack of the BestChange platform and over time it can cost them their hard-earned authority.

Regarding the active Openchange case, I would like to see what possible sanctions will be taken against them.
I followed the Janyiah201 case, management by Openchange commenting on the BestChange site, and it is an understatement to say that it was unprofessional and impudent (unfortunately, everything has been deleted   )
Now they declared the case solved, but they kept 10% of the value? For what? a transaction that never happened?
so do they still deserve to stay on this monitoring or even without any negative(true) comment?

So, JollyGood this is my short statement and for now, I still haven't considered leaving the signature campaign, at least not for the reasons that you state as sufficient.

otherwise, if all the members of the BestChange signature campaign would report here, and if the majority would give them support, how would it be interpreted? Paid and biased support on the forum?
 

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wasn't there already a discussion about this in the BestChange ANN thread about these exchanges? They gave a clear indication that it was only an informative listing.
and it is clearly indicated on the site itself. For example https://www.bestchange.com/binance-exchanger.html




as mediators, you are trying to make a compromise between your clients and their users, but it seems that it does not provide the same quality to both parties. Your rating system looks more like solved or unsolved, but the user experience cannot be considered black or white. you have to provide more.

But how can we know what jurisdiction they use if they didn't disclose this information anywhere on their website, and they didn't say what third-party exchanges they are using?

In case with openchange this was not temporary freeze of funds for investigation, they wanted to confiscate 100% of coins (without kyc), until customer said he will reveal their sensitive information in public.
Now they are holding 10% of his coins, and it's clear there was no investigation at all.

I think that 99% of forum members involved in this discussion thinks that BestChange review system is currently misleading and needs to be improved, so we can't all be wrong about that.
It's not misleading at all to say that some exchanges are asking for kyc more often than others, and isn't this the main reason why most people are using BestChange in the first place?

I would like to see some statistic with number of positive feedback being deleted, but I am sure number of those is much less compared to closed deleted negative reviews.
If I post 100 positive and 100 negative reviews, I am sure that 100 negative reviews would be deleted, and more positive reviews would stay.
This is how your feedback system works, and hiring more workers wont really fix this issue.

Thank you for your subjective opinion on the matter, but firstly, it isn’t so. Secondly, please re-read our post. We have made it clear that what matters is not the jurisdiction of the exchanger, but jurisdiction of the custodial service they use for receiving and storing cryptocurrency.


Absolutely correct, that’s why we don’t remove reviews with at least to some extent grounded negative opinion, but just on our service they have “white background”. And red highlights relevant financial claims. Due to the fact that the system automatically switches an exchanger with several claims off, we allowed them to lift claims on their own (as, generally speaking, the option for the users to re-open the claim if, according to them, the financial question hasn't been solved).

Firstly, the point is not about confiscation in this context, but about freezing for the time of investigation. Secondly, it is only your subjective attitude to justice. In a human way, we understand you, and we would also not want any services, including banks and brokers, to freeze any funds, but the financial world is what it is, and we comply with the rules of the world community, not groups of crypto-enthusiasts from the forum, although we would like the opposite.


We do not draw the line between neutral reviews and negative reviews as such. This is the website’s peculiarity implemented 13 years ago, in the future we would try to divide review not on three categories like now, but into many more categories. We understand that sometimes psychologically one wants to leave “something red” and not a usual neutral review with your indignations.


This would be misleading. If this policy would be implemented in a limited number of services, but in reality, this happens very often, that’s why we would need to put mark on 90 percent of exchangers, which contradicts the principles of marking. We mark only those services that do something untypical.
Very nice remark, and on the level of personal support we support your wishes, however, until the shops sell goods for bitcoin without its obligatory conversion to dollars to pay for the taxes in dollars, we cannot fully speak about the “future” of financial system.

The problem is that many services do not have this functionality. The majority of custodial services accept and send funds from different wallets. Moreover, even if you allow that the exchanger will use “proxy-addresses” for cold storage, they would need subtle technical settings to forcibly specify what inputs to be used as outputs, as the majority of “wallets” do not have these functions by default.
What you describe would be a wonderful future for these situation, but given the conditions that this practice will be possible thanks to the improved software. Under the current conditions, the tactic you’ve described, turns exchangers into bictoin-mixers, this is unacceptable.

We did write earlier that this is a little bit old-fashioned functionality due to limited number of employees, not the number of our employees has increased sufficiently to manually control any reviews. Considering your hypothetic situation, most likely soon we would delete all the fake reviews, because moderators regularly check reviews marked as suspicious on a regular basis. We check over dozen of various technical parameters, besides professional linguistic analysis, to remove the majority of fake reviews, both positive and neutral, paid for by competitors of this or that exchanger.


Trustpilot uses something similar, we are also considering a similar mechanism, but so far it is difficult to implement in the current system (inner code of the site). It may be realized in the updated version, and so far we can only limit for the exchanger the number of attempts to lift the claim without our participation, so that they use this function wisely and not abuse it.

This is not exactly like that. Besides “solved claims” users can leave simple neutral reviews without negative feedback. But the situations you describe do take place. However, you need to consider that the large number of solved claims means only that although there were some disagreements, but the claims what solved in favor of the client (otherwise they would stay red, if necessary, with our claim). Any user, if they wish so, can read all the history of reviews, we don’t remove them, we only don’t focus attention on them.
In simple terms, some minor disagreements of clients in the past, which were solved in their favor, won’t increase risks of losing funds of the current clients, therefore, we ignore this factor. Anything more serious is being controlled by our moderators manually, and if the violations are serios, we can remove the exchanger form the listing temporarily or forever, depending on the degree of violation.

Following your logic, if I visit a phishing website through Google, they bear financial responsibility for my loses?  Sounds absurd, isn’t it? But you allow these statements in our address, because you want it this way. If you want to whitewash google saying that they don’t accept funds from fraudsters, do google that information. We can even share our case, when for many weeks we were trying to no avail to remove via their slow support a phishing of our service which was in the google Ads.

Of course, this in no away justifies financial claims that happen from time to time due to real loss of funds, and we are truly sorry for the victims in these or those situations. But we don’t have any legal binding with these services where users exchange their funds, formally we are a simple informative resource, that is why we must not make any compensations, although from the heigh of our authority we try to put pressure on exchangers when they, in our opinion, are wrong, to return the funds to the victims, and if necessary, in extreme cases, we transfer all the information we have to law enforcement agencies.

Information that we do no bear financial responsibility is clearly stated in several places on the website. And it is so, even if you want the opposite.

CZ has a referral program, and my guess is the other listed exchanges do the same.

One solution is to never send them a large amount. That gives a slightly lower exchange rate and more transaction fees, but you won't risk having everything at once frozen.

I would agree on this one with you, and I am not blaming BestChange for scamming anyone, but I think they could be misleading customers with their reviews.
Can you imagine if Trustpilot would only have positive feedback, what would be the point of that website?

I am not even sure how websites get's listed both on BestChange and similar websites like TrustPilot, and we can clearly see big exchanges there like Binance, Kraken, Bittrex, etc.
I don't think CZ or other owners would paid anything to BestChange for listing there or they gave them some percentage, but than again only they have few negative reviews on BestChange website.

I think that BestChange needs to make major rework or their review system, or things like this will continue to happen in future.
Today it is issue with KYC, tomorrow it can be with something else, and there is no way to see real history of solved/unsolved problems with exchanges.

I used them as well before and I had good experience, but if same thing happened to me with 0.25 BTC I wouldn't be happy about it.

I was not been a big fan of  Best Change when they first came to this forum with their signature campaign, it took a very long time for me to give them credit on that front. Their very long standing signature campaign (which is still running) with virtually no complaints against their forum representative for delayed payments etc should not be conflated with the actual business Best Change are conducting.

They are listing entities on their website and receiving remuneration for referrals therefore have a responsibility towards all customers that are arriving on the Best Change website only to be directed away when affiliate links are clicked. The danger was always going to be in the event any of those affiliated exchanges were to enforce a KYC/AML scenario on customers and if customers lost out financially who would actually be at fault.

Best Change have had accusation of their conduct raised in the past and I would still advise caution when using their website because once a customer has moved from the Best Change website to an affiliate exchange, it is the exchange that decides how to treat the customer: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.53617135

Ultimately, I think Best Change are partly responsible for any financial loss customers incur as a result of directing users to their affiliate websites. Those customers would not have been diverted to (and maybe never would have found) the affiliate exchanges had they not been listed on the Best Change website. As for the exchanges themselves, the very low rates of scam allegations against them (via Best Change) means thankfully this is still at very low levels. In the case you mentioned, why was the exchange not removed for their listing?

By them writing "Reliable and Trusted" on their website it does not relieve them of moral and ethical responsibilities towards customers. I wonder if any of those that are part of the Best Change signature campaign will look in to this and ask Best Change for an explanation.

We all agree. To be honest right now it's not a feedback system but a system where you leave your comment or make conversation. It's same as we are sharing our opinions to each others in the forum. The difference is in BestChange when it is positive comment it is showing positive review (green I assume) but when this is a complain or negative comment it is showing as only comment, not considering it a review anymore. And finally where they are showing their overall score they are only counting the positive feedback to mislead the visitors know anything that is happening in the negative side.

I was using it for analogy only that this could happen too.

I've used BestChange too, and posted in their topic several times. I like their service.

I haven't. But that doesn't mean things can't be improved.

That's probably why they haven't been tagged yet (other than by TMAN). Let's keep it that way

It makes me curious how they decide which exchangers to add.
It's no joke for OP, who lost 0.256BTC.

We all know that inactive flags, with insufficient support, mean nothing.

As far as I recall, and my memory may be deceiving me, at least Ratimov and icopress have used their services and I would say that a few of those who wear the signature or have worn it in the past have also used Best Change. I would say that among the Russian community there are a few who have used it. Many of those are in DT.

Have they been scammed?

It doesn't add up to me that Best Change uses a system that allows large scale scamming and this has not resulted in massive negative feedbacks from DT or flags with sufficient support.


Don't get me wrong, in everything else we agree: the feedback system needs to change, and linking to a "service" that freezes funds by requisting KYC but only provides an email address is a joke. A bad one.

You don't have to be cynical for that. It's very clear they don't want valid complaints to be visible, and designed their "feedback" system to allow that. A honest feedback system could benefit the honest exchangers.

There have been several accusations, some of them in Russian (so I can't read them), and Best_Change has 3 inactive Flags (created by 2 different users).

I noticed the lack of negatives, but didn't pay close attention to it. I've used the site exactly like you described:

I really want BestChange (or any other service) to provide a honest overview of different instant exchangers. It's hard to know which ones can be trusted without a review system, but now that I know the review system is flawed, I'm back to square one.

How about OP's story?
I'd say it's totally unacceptable for a "company" that only provides an email address to demand KYC. So OP got scammed, and until this moment BestChange allows the scammer to hide the negative feedback.

Exactly. But if someone advertises a scam in their signature, the user gets tagged even though they're not the scammer.

I don't think that matters.

I did answer your question. Okay let me try it again.
Honestly no one was scammed by Best_Change. How would they? BestChange is a site who compares exchanges and help the users to pick the best service to exchange their corns. I will not accuse Trustpilot for losing money in a site just because I saw positive ratings about the site in Trustpilot. But Trustpilot has some liabilities to be transparent to their visitors because they are successful in their industry.

The question here how BestChange are conducting business with the exchanges. Because these exchanges give them money to list their site, they are obviously biased to work for the exchanges. They need a system which favours the exchanges. Otherwise there are no point for them to have a controversial UX which shows 0 negative rating for all the sites they list.

If any site scammed anyone then it's those x,y,z exchanges. It's not BestChange but BestChange has liabilities because they made a system which favours those x,y,x systems and do not favour their visitors to get real data other than some manipulated feedback. If BestChange are in question then it's their review structure. They are not directly involved in the scam.

How are we going to confirm the user who lost his btc did not find the website x,y,z from search engine or any other ad?
They found the exchange from a random source, exchanged and it went wrong. Then the guy found BestChange advertising the exchange and he wanted to have their help to resolve the case. But when it did not then they are in the forum seeking our help. How are we going to know all of it?

There has been more than one scam accusation against BestChange in the past. The most visible one is here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/about-bestchange-again-5219339

The situation described then is similar to what OP is describing now. Made a payment to an exchange, the exchange then froze that deposit and demanded KYC. The exchange in question (although now inactive) is still listed on BestChange with a 100% positive rating and multiple "cancelled" claims.

But regardless of whether this is the first or the one hundredth time this has happened, BestChange need to do better. Their landing page says they only use "reliable and trusted" exchanges, and the exchanges are all "100% legal". They give exchanges a green tick to show they have undergone "additional checks". If this is true then BestChange should have, at a minimum, a name, address and company registration for OpenChange that they can provide to OP to let him take forward his claim, not to mention they should not be allowing exchanges to nullify all negative reviews with a single click.

I also remember some threads, resolved positively, but although you are replying to me, you are not answering my point: there are quite a few people on the forum using Best Change regularly. What are the chances of none of them being scammed over the years if Best Change have been twisting the rating system so people can be scammed and they just cash in a commission.

I believe that in this, o_e_l_e_o and I have a quasi-ideological opposite position. For him companies in general are evil and do anything to make money, including scam people.

What I know more closely are small and medium companies and I say that a company that does not treat its customers well does not last long in business. I don't even take into account scam because in the physical world a small or medium company that scams ends up with its owner in jail.

Another thing would be big megacorporations.

I saw few threads against Best_Change in the past. If my memory is correct, I do not think the feedback manipulation never was in anyone's mind before. If they had the same feedback system where there are no negative were visible then it proves my argument of eyeballs on only the positive random rating numbers. I think our brain is designed not to pay attention in flat numbers.

0/20, 0/10, 0/50, 0/32, 0/87 if these are some feedback data presented on a table to quick look then you are lost on the numbers that are changing at the right but while you are lost on those numbers, you are not really paying attention on why in the left all are 0.

But do you think if this was the case, during many years nobody would have complained on the forum until now? There are quite a few people on the forum who regularly use Best Change services.

Out of curiosity, I clicked through some other exchanges they list with a perfect 100% feedback rating. Here's an example: https://www.bestchange.com/exwallets-exchanger.html

With 8 pages of feedback, and 30 pieces of feedback per page, this exchange has ~240 pieces of feedback. It is rated 0/57, meaning it has ~183 claims against it which it has simply cancelled and therefore do not show up in its ratings. It is incredibly misleading, and I agree, bordering on scam territory, for BestChange to allow these exchanges to simply nullify any and all complaints against them without any kind of resolution or verification the complaint has been settled.

A cynical person might suggest that BestChange allow this to happen since they are paid commission from all these exchanges, and so it is in their own interest to continue allowing users to be scammed by them despite a huge number of red flags.

I agree with this 100%. @Best Change, you know I have a good opinion of you, at least so far, and I also think this case can't just be left at that.

If they only keep positive feedbacks as "reviews" then thats plain shilling. Just my opinion.

A suggestion:

Before cancelling claims, how about asking the customer if he agrees to cancel his claim or how about having a buffer like number of days so if the customer failed to respond if he/she agrees to void his claim, it will not be a dead end.

@Best_Change, speaking about the reviews


I was not able to look in details when I visited the site earlier but then I noticed there are no negative (red) reviews for any exchange.
This is tricky. A part of Neuromarketing. Nothing wrong with Neuromarketing but your approach is misleading. You are giving the users a look that there are all positive about the exchanges you list.

An internet user who do not have time to look at every details for different sites, do not know how different exchange sites function in details, mostly they are your visitor. They see everything good about all the site you listed. It does not always raise in mind that why there are no negative for the sites listed, they check for the best exchange rate. They see reviews but easily miss the part of no negative review, eye balls are are always on the numbers of positive reviews. They do not see any negative for the selected exchange too because eye balls are always in the positive ones. They make the exchange.

So, even you are saying this is not the best UX but this is obviously misleading approach.

I do not think loyal visitors which you think regular apply for site like yours. In a site like this (listing sites) internet users do not spend much time. They know the site exists, visit, find the service, leave the site. Almost all the users in your site do not really need to know how the site functions entirely. They only see the first page and the data left on the table. It is important that you present your data correctly.

I am not blaming you for anything. A service always can not serve everyone as the client expects. Thing can go wrong sometimes which is absolutely fine when there is intention to make it correct. I think you really need to improve this feedback part and be real. Right now this is not a real feedback system, not from the look of it.

At first, I didn't think BestChange is to blame, but I'm more and more leaning towards them covering for scammers.
Just like, apparently, exchangers ask customers to deposit to addresses they don't control. That's very shady!

Despite this, the anonymous site demands KYC from their customers. I don't think that's right.

That would mean that all other (positive) reviews available for exchanges are just solved financial claims?
I don't think your explanation is good enough, because I can clearly see people praising service, saying communication was great, and we can also see love messages...



You need to add information for ALL exchanges with random kyc check may be performed and coins could be confiscated.
Alternative option is to say that all exchanges could ask for kyc.

So what happens if I create bunch of fake positive reviews and ''attack'' your system like that?
Why don't you consider that to be abuse in the same way like you consider ALL negative reviews?
For example, I could hire bunch of people to make minimal transaction and write 100 or more positive reviews for openchange or any other exchange I want.
You can't control this manually and delete every negative review like you are doing now.

Only just saw this thread, but I've said exactly what is being discussed here in the other thread OP opened: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.60491521

It is incredibly unethical that exchanges are simply allowed to nullify any claims against them, even if those claims are unresolved, and retain a 100% positive rating on BestChange.

If the exchange in question is the one deciding when a claim is resolved, without any independent verification, then the whole system is utterly meaningless.

OpenChange should then inform OP of which custodial service is holding his coins or which law enforcement agencies his coins are being handed over to, so can pursue other avenues to reclaim them. Allowing OpenChange to repeatedly close his claim despite it being unresolved is incredibly shady.

Problem. People who are not your regular users, they easily misleads. Isn't it better to have an improved UX if you feel it's not enough. New visitors will have better understanding.

This is a better idea and this is how it was supposed to. I am glad that you are working on it. Looking forward to see the update.

What's wrong to send the coins back to the address it came from if the sender do not agree to AML/KYC. I personally do not see any problem since he did not convert it from crypto to fiat.

Why not?  I've never used your service, but is it an advertising service for exchanges, or is it a service to help customers find an exchange for their needs?  If it's the latter then you should certainly have reviews, if it's the former then you're just shilling for the AML/KYC scammers like Freewallet and your service is absolutely useless.



I won't say this is intentionally misleading, but it's definitely misleading nonetheless.



I'm calling BS on this.  Bitcoin was intended to put individuals in control of their wealth, and take control away from governments and institutions who've bastardized the financial industry to keep masses beholden to their services, and therefor subject to their fees and control.  The fact that we have the commonly used term "Financial Industry"  in our vocabulary is a testament to their bastardisation of money.  What "industry?"  What do they actually produce?  What value do they add to the lives of normal citizens?

Allowing governments and their "financial institution" cohorts to apply their restrictions on bitcoin only allows them to continue their policy of using finances to enslave the populous.

These are the options:
The problem is that the service can decide when it's "resolved". And, no surprise, they all "resolve" everything!

That's a lousy excuse. Every services on the planet can receive unwarranted negative reviews somewhere on the internet. That makes it up to the customer to decide how they value reviews. Giving the service the power to censor reviews makes the reviews utterly useless and worse: misleading.

Of course I know Bitcoin itself will still work. That's not the point.
AML doesn't mean you can confiscate someone's funds because a previous owner may have committed a crime. That is what fungibility means. AML also doesn't mean an exchange can return the funds after receiving KYC documents.

The jurisdiction to which the exchanger is subject is currently completely independent of the international legal AML rules (due to sanctions).

We don’t have a notion of a “negative review” on our website, the red marks unsolved financial claims to the service. Maybe it’s not the most obvious UX-design, but our service is over 15 years old, out of which for 13 years it has been exactly in this design and loyal users know about this feature.


The icon is obligatory only if KYC is obligatory for every (or for the absolute majority) of transactions. It there are random KYC-check for transactions with high level of AML-risk, we don’t make exchangers set this icon. However, we always urge users to get acquainted with the exchange rules before the operation, after coming to the exchanger’s website.



Please understand that AML does not threaten the integrity of bitcoin ecosystem as such, but it only limits the work with gateways between the traditional financial system and the crypto world. Whether you want it or not, but if you wish to exchanger bitcoin to dollars or rubles, you have to be so kind as to comply with the rules for handling fiat currencies, and they imply a tough policy of AML legislation in many countries of the world. With that, if you make deals within the crypto community nobody and never will censor your operations, this is the essence of decentralization.

Meanwhile, you want to shift the principles of decentralization to centralized services, such as exchanges, exchangers and simple shops operating in KYC-enabled jurisdictions. This position is quite popular and understandable, but it is fundamentally wrong and contrary to the laws of many countries.
Use bitcoin within cryptocurrency ecosystem, and don’t try to exchange it to fiat currency, then you won’t have to complaint at “AML-discrimination”.


When funds are frozen on an AML basis, the jurisdiction of the exchanger itself rarely plays a role, because they often follow instructions from the custodial service that they use to receive and store cryptocurrency. Such services are subject to all international AML legislation of the countries in which they operate (in fact, all world). Therefore, your references and hints are inappropriate.



Thank you for having paid attention to this problem. But we would like to remind you that we don’t have “negative reviews”, we only have “financial claims”. This is why we have an automatic system that switches the exchanger off when it has several active claims. We understand that this is a somewhat old-fashioned scheme of work with financial claims, but it was implemented for the sake of protection from "consumer terrorism" in the absence of our moderators.

Currently, our staff number has increased sufficiently to process the majority of these cases manually, that’s why we are already working on changing this system — soon exchangers will have a very limited number of attempts to lift a claim on their own, without our interference. Please wait for this update, we are already thinking about all the details.

Yep, this is most probably correct.


Indeed, let's see what happens in the next few days. If they still keep the funds, the situation becomes clear.


This is indeed a system that can be abused by the exchanges. Not good.

Knowing the mentality of the country in whose jurisdiction such a legal exchanger is opened, I can say with 100% probability that not a single confiscated amount will be transferred to the authorities under any circumstances. Those legal legal clippings they refer to are a formality, as the letter of the law requires them to do so. Not to mention the nominee directors of this exchanger (as is often the case).

Therefore, if the funds are not returned to the user at the address from which they came, I will consider this precedent as a fraud. This is even quite ironic and somewhat similar to the fact that a gray office confiscates the user's supposedly gray money, referring to the law.

Well said

Unfortunately Bitcoin is not fungible. Unfortunately, since the history of each and every input is viewable by anybody, various businesses can easily become picky in where your coins are coming from or what you are doing with them.

BestChange's case is not unique. Afaik some bigger exchanges may be doing the same. BestChange could mark these exchanges they redirect to, in a way or another, but... there will still be some who fail to read the signs and such classification may also not be great for the business.
What has happened to OP is pretty much not unique also.

I don't understand why people don't read everything thoroughly before sending their money here and there.
I don't understand why people don't test new services with smaller amounts of money, which don't have the potential to "hurt the budget" much in case things go wrong.


Since the service OP was using has stated that it uses KYC/AML, it's somewhat at the limit between scam/stealing and not (although I guess that there's a bigger chance they keep those funds instead of sending them to the authorities). I would certainly avoid them, but I'm hesitant in calling them scammers.
OP should have been taking more precautions and avoid them earlier.

Bad business practices and horrible morals is not what constitutes a scam, although we sometimes wish it did. So basically there is no ground for a scam accusation nor will anyone do anything about this. Sorry to have to tell you that.

The best thing you can do is spread your message about their bad practices and hope that people stop using their services. They have social media channels, I presume? Thats where you can show their userbase what they really are.

But be careful not to go too far and give them an excuse to accuse you of something like libel....

I don't see much future for this scam accusation from what the OP says, You can question the way they operate, but they are not a scam.

Looking at the other thread, I see that what happens is that the exchange freezed the funds that passed via Chip Mixer, which brings us to the central issue that is being discussed lately in the forum:


Leaving aside the unfairness of this, do you see much future for a business model that is dedicated to obscure the origin of funds for "privacy"? I see it as having the same future as crypto ATMs that let you withdraw tens of thousands of non-kyc Euros in a relatively short time "for privacy".

Comprare/Vendere Bitcoin senza KYC: Bancomat Bitcoin rispettosi della Privacy

Translated: Buying/Selling Bitcoin without KYC: Privacy-Friendly Bitcoin ATMs.

As of today they require KYC for any transaction, any amount.

I believe that politicians are not aware of what mixers are, otherwise they would be banned or forced to operate differently, like ATMs.

Unfortunately, BestChange supports the anti-Bitcoin idea of "taint", and like most (or all) companies that do so, they don't state that on their website.
It was brought up here:

My stance:

BestChange's stance:

BestChange supports the (crazy) idea that 1BTC≠1BTC, which is a huge threat to Bitcoin and it's users.

They promote themselves as:


And they state this:


Actually, they list only exchangers with referral program and all they care are their referral earnings. If you take a look at exchangers list, most of them are with 0 (ZERO!) negative reviews, because if you post negative review they invite the exchanger to comment and all that exchanger have to to is to click "cancel claim" and your negative review becomes a comment.

Today I have found that there are many exchangers listed there with more "comments" then positive reviews, but they are still listed.

Some exchangers, like Changelly, next to it's name have icon which shows:"This exchanger can require verification of client's documents", meaning that they might ask for KYC.

But when other exchangers who does not have this icon ask for KYC, freeze the money, like in MY CASE, they won't do anything and they will take exchangers side because they are the ones who are paying them.

They have multiple domains:
bestchange.com
bestchange.ru and mirror bestchange.net



Profile links:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/bestchange-1073450
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/bestchange-1978649

Threads on Bitcointalk:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/forget-about-exchanger-search-use-bestchange-3309245
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/bestchangeru-5179115

Signature campaign:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/cfnp-bestchange-signature-campaign-sr-member-5217201