Good day everyone 🤗
Today in this special post I would like to share with the Steemit community my personal experience with a cryptocurrency exchange I’ve been personally using. That exchange is ....
WHAT IS CRYPTOPIA?
Cryptopia is a cryptocurrency exchange site based out of New Zealand 🇳🇿. Founded in 2017 Cryptopia offers hundreds of altcoins to trade including some that are exclusive only to Cryptopia users. The platform complies with the laws of New Zealand, but operates worldwide with no exceptions. Its trading volume is considerably lower than that of other exchanges, with just over 600 BTC every day (roughly 1.6 million USD)
Cryptopia launched a cryptocurrency (NZDT) whose price would be pegged to the New Zealand dollar (NZD) similar to Tether (USDT) and it American counterparts (USD). The only drawback on the matter is that, due to personal views of the staff, Ethereum is not accepted.
Getting a new altcoin listed requires to pay a fee so that the staff will review the currency. The details of the coin must be sent through a ticket. The pricing is displayed in their website, as ‘Paytopia’.
Besides the exchange, the site comes with a cloud mining venture (Mineshaft), a marketplace (where naturally only cryptocurrencies are accepted), a knowledge base with information about most of the listed altcoins (CoinInfo) and an arbitrage tool.
Sounds pretty good so far right?
MY EXPERIENCE WITH THE PLATFORM
I started using Cryptopia in October of 2017. I sign up for the platform because I wanted to actively trade Electroneum which was only available on Cryptopia. I deposited Bitcoin (BTC) with no issues and used that to buy Electroneum (ETN) which was easy to do.
For the next few months I actively traded ETN and was able to turn a few hundred Electroneum into a just over 2000. Nothing crazy but at the time I was able to catch the ramps selling the tokens and repurchasing them in the dips. The platform interface was easy to use and navigate and the whole time trading was also problem free.
In December life got a little busy with Christmas and the New Years approaching. I decided to withdrawal my ETN I earned and store it on a online wallet. The process again was smooth and took about 5 minutes with the tokens reaching its destination. Overall I was as happy as a pig in the mud! I wasn’t rich but I made some good returns just by interacting with Cryptopia platform.
DEPOSITS , WITHDRAWALS, AND THE SUPPORT TEAM
Now 2018 has arrived! A new year, new opportunity, and new chapter to my story. To be honest to anyone still reading after the holidays I completely forgot about Electroneum and had some other projects going on that I was more invested into. Nearing the end of January I stumbled upon some negative news regarding ETN and instantly reminded myself I had some stored away in an online wallet.
My next decision I made was I would sell whatever I had off. I wasn’t seeing much from Electroneum and I didn’t like that fact the circulating supply was increasing everyday which was effecting it’s value. So the simple choice was to deposit back the ETN on Cryptopia and sell. The next thing that happened would totally change my stance on Cryptopia for good.
I logged into the online wallet and began the process of sending Electroneum to Cryptopia. I followed all the steps and double check addresses as I’ve always have. The ETN was on it way back and all signs were good. I waited 10 minutes .... 30 minutes ... 3 hours and a big 0 ETN balance on Cryptopia and a completed transaction verification from my online wallet. WTF! 🤬
I started to look more into it and uncovered hundreds if not thousands of complaints regarding deposits for Electroneum and other altcoins as well. I was deflated so to speak, Reddit, Twitter, and even Cryptopias own forums was flooded with user annoyance with the platform.
I tried to reach out and made a support ticket in hopes my ETN was just stuck in limbo and would of been a simple fix on Cryptopias end. I received a general bulk reply informing me that they were badly back upped and it could take weeks before anyone could even look at it.
💡 FINAL THOUGHTS 💡
In my opinion Cryptopia as a business has an obligation to protect it costumers. I strongly feel that after all my research that if deposits are a issue they absolutely NEED to disable it and address it immediately. There are a flood of users losing money including myself waiting for deposits to complete and that’s if they are able to recover it at all with a 10% recovery fee. So please friends be wary of this exchange there are other suitable more reputable ones out there and if your really that big on Electroneum, Cryptopia isn’t the only exchange it’s available on. Do your home work be careful I hope you guys never experience this and best of luck in the market!
Until next time! ✌🏻😊
Disclaimer this is a biased opinion reflected from my experience with the party in mention