A lot of people are confused over what is going on with Bittrex right now. Plenty of users can no longer withdraw large amounts of money or even have had their accounts closed. This situation is not all that surprising, considering the company introduced a major policy change quite some time ago. Those changes have only recently gone into effect, which is currently causing a lot of confusion.
Bittrex Policy Changes Cause Confusion
A few weeks ago, we touched upon the latest round of policy changes affecting users of Bittrex, the popular cryptocurrency exchange. These changes were introduced by the company in late 2016, yet only went into effect a few weeks ago. It is remarkable to see how few people actually pay attention to these things when they are announced. Instead, we see various reports pop up that the company is “acting shady” and potentially “defrauding customers”, neither of which is even remotely true.
While it is true these changes affect thousands of users, they were also communicated well in advance. Indeed, people who did not verify their accounts before a certain date were informed they would be faced with much lower withdrawal limits until they upgraded their accounts. All cryptocurrency exchanges have to adhere to strict anti-money laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) laws these days, which means they need to verify the identity of all customers accordingly.
A lot of Bittrex users seemingly did not take the necessary steps in this regard. Those users are now paying the price for having failed to do so, which is the main source of confusion we have to deal with now. In reality, most users should still be able to update their accounts by submitting more verification documents. Once they do so, their withdrawal limits will be raised once again, which doesn’t require much work by the user whatsoever.
Most of the changes introduced by Bittrex on August 1st focused on improving account security as a whole. Users were actively advised to enable two-factor authentication or else deal with withdrawal limits of up to one Bitcoin. That is still more than acceptable for most people, although it is always better to take account security very seriously.
There is no reason as to why people would have their accounts closed all of a sudden. In most cases, these issues can be resolved by going through the proper KYC procedure. Bittrex always reserves the right to close accounts if they suspect something malicious or nefarious has been going on, though. It seems the site is actively monitoring accounts for unusual activity more so now than before, which means some users will have some explaining to do. Then again, it also has a support system in place to ensure issues like these are rectified accordingly.
In the end, there is no reason to think Bittrex is shady or stealing from users. The changes were announced last year and went into effect over two months ago. For some reason, a lot of people only recently found out about them, which is rather odd. The company takes customer verification and security very seriously, which comes at a small convenience cost. Anyone who goes through the proper motions will have no issues whatsoever, though, by the looks of things.
