People who have paid attention to the Bitcoin network issues will know that companies have been forced to make unpopular decisions. For instance, BitPay began charging a second fee on top of regular mining costs to process Bitcoin payments. HitBTC is now charging all users a Bitcoin deposit fee, which is a very surprising turn of events. It is certainly something most people will not be too happy with, but until Bitcoin’s network issues are resolved, this situation will remain unchanged.
HitBTC Demands a Bitcoin Deposit Fee
Anyone who has ever used a cryptocurrency exchange will be aware of the most common fees. There’s a miner fee to include in your transaction when moving money to an exchange. When you attempt to withdraw funds, there’s typically another fee to be taken into account. Conducting trades on such platforms is usually subject to maker and taker fees as well. It is not the cheapest experience by any means, but things can always get worse.
More specifically, the HitBTC exchange has made a change which most people won’t appreciate all that much. Users are now forced to pay a Bitcoin deposit fee. While it is understandable that the company is introducing such a thing, it will lose a lot of customers because of it regardless. The fixed fee for all Bitcoin deposits is a problem not just because it is an additional cost, but also because it is in place for the foreseeable future.
Right now, this fee is 0.0003 BTC. It is unclear if it will remain fixed or change depending on the price of Bitcoin. At current Bitcoin prices, this means users will pay US$4 for every Bitcoin deposit they make to HitBTC. This is a very controversial business decision which hopefully won’t make its way to other exchanges in the future. After all, users already pay a miner fee when sending money, and anything on top of that just seems excessive.
Considering that HitBTC’s users were warned less than 24 hours in advance of the change, it is obvious a lot of users will not be too happy about this decision. It is evident that HitBTC is going through some changes right now, and most of them are not positive by any means. For now, these deposit fees will be deducted from incoming BTC amounts. Any deposit lower than the fee will be used to pay the fee and not be refunded to customers.
If other cryptocurrency exchanges were to implement similar practices, moving money to exchanges would quickly become far too expensive for most people. After all, the regular miner fee is already in the double digits right now. Sending US$50 worth of Bitcoin to HitBTC, for example, is now subject to at least US$14 in fees. It is a very expensive way of moving money around the world, and something will need to change to alleviate this problem in the future.
For its part, the company claims this decision was made to strengthen all Bitcoin processes on the HitBTC platform. Moreover, the company aims to “provide stability in the functioning of the major cryptocurrency.” Nevertheless, it is likely we will see people move away from HitBTC moving forward, as its withdrawal fees have been quite high in the past few weeks. Adding Bitcoin deposit fees on top of it all will not do them any favors whatsoever.
