Running a cryptocurrency exchange has never been easy. In the first few years of Bitcoin’s existence, there wasn’t even enough demand to warrant such trading platforms. Things have significantly changed since, but that doesn’t mean the job has become any less difficult. The Bittrex exchange, for example, seems to be suffering from some oddities. Hundreds of users have taken to social media to complain about locked accounts or problems completing trades on the platform. As a result, the #BittrexSucks hashtag is trending on Twitter right now.
Bittrex has Some Issues to Sort out
As is always the case when reports like these arise, there is a good chance most people can’t relate to them. For instance, the Bittrex account belonging to the author of this article works just fine despite being on the Basic level. Trades are completing just fine, and logging into the platform is not causing any major problems. Even withdrawal requests – despite the 0.4 BTC daily limit – seem to be going through without a hitch. For a lot of users, though, that situation is very different.
As evidenced by #BittrexSucks, it is clear that plenty of people are not having the best of times using Bittrex. Although a lot of these problems date back to early December 2017, new complaints tend to pop up every now and then. Some users even claim their accounts have been locked for a total of three months, which would be rather worrisome. Then again, these users haven’t shared why that may be the case, and thus it is difficult to gauge what is going on exactly.
One has to keep in mind there is a good reason as to why Bittrex might lock a user’s account. The company performs a wide range of checks to prevent strange behavior or any illicit activity. Moreover, similar to most exchanges, Bittrex always reserves the right to close a user’s account for whatever reason the exchange deems appropriate. It seems highly unlikely this company would do so randomly and without any major evidence to warrant such action.
Looking over the information posted on social media, it seems some users are complaining about 404 errors and HTTP socket errors. Again, these problems only apply to select users, by the look of things, whereas the rest of the user base has had no issues whatsoever. Another common complaint is that Bittrex takes a very long time to respond to customer support tickets, assuming it does so in the first place. Your mileage may vary in this regard, as some issues are a lot more difficult to solve than others.
While it is unacceptable to ignore users if they have legitimate concerns, there has been no actual evidence to back up most of these claims. Since we are unable to recreate any of the issues that users are experiencing right now, it’s difficult to say whether those problems are on their end or the exchange’s. The former seems more likely, but that doesn’t mean these issues should remain unresolved. Ever since Bittrex enforced new rules regarding account verification a few months ago, people have had issues with the company. Considering that Bittrex announced those changes nearly a year in advance, it is evident that a lot of problems could have been avoided by the users themselves. Since these complaints have become less frequent since mid-December, it seems safe to assume the company managed to resolve quite a few of the issues.
There is another popular Bittrex-related hashtag trending on Twitter right now. A quick look at the #Bittrex_disabled_accounts page shows that there are a lot more issues to be found there. Account problems are quite problematic for any major cryptocurrency exchange, but it is unclear exactly what is going on here. We can only hope that the affected users regain access to their accounts as soon as possible.
