The madness continues with the amount of people flowing into crypto every day and the exchanges that lack the server capacity to hold them. Sites like Bittrex and Cryptopia have decided that in the short term until they can get more servers up, the only solution is to halt registration. For people who want to speculate or sell their coins, but dont have accounts this is quite the problem. There is now actually a market for accounts on sites like these at prices that are nothing to scoff at.
In more than one case I saw people paying over $500 for a bittrex account and over $2000 for one that was completely verified. The completely verified account might be an outlayer because there is a chance that by selling that account someone could rack up a ton in money that needed to be paid as capital gains, if bittrex was ever audited. However just basic accounts going for $500 is insane and shows just how much people are willing to pay in order to just get on an exchange.
These people are obviously not just buying certain coins, but most likely speculating on a large amount and selling them quite often. If I had to guess, they are probably partaking in coins that are pumped deliberately and dumped in a few days. With deep pockets and a high liquidity someone doing that could make millions a year. If you are going to be risking your money on an exchange you are going to want to do it on the ones with the most liquidity and reputability which means most other exchanges arent an option.
Even cryptopia which isnt as popular as bittrex is shutting down registration which means the bittrex overflow couldnt even be handled. I have no idea where people are going after cryptopia but I know some people who purchased accounts because they dont trust most other places. The overflow of people is part of the reason that customer support has been so bad these past few weeks and it makes me wonder how many people are actually getting into the space.
I do have to say with this amount of speculation to the point where people are buying accounts for exchanges, I think we are due for a huge price correction. This crazyness reminds me of the dotcom bubble when people were buying everything without even knowing what the company did as long as they had a dot com in their name. I have a feeling this will be a story that we will look back at in 10 years and say “I cant believe people were actually doing that”. As for selling accounts, I wouldnt recommend it personally because its just not worth the money for the risk of security for you personally. I do wonder how long it will take for these exchanges to fully open registration again.
-Calaber24p