I'm so sad that I have to write this kind of post, but hopefully it can be a fair warning to other crypto users.
I lost a lot of money to these scammers, and I hope that it wont happen to you..
There are a lot of investment platforms around the web where the main goal is for you to invest your money in their services, in return you get an amount of passive income every day in your online account on their page.
I know, it sounds too-good-to-be-true and sketchy already. But when I was starting in cryptocurrencies it sounded like a great way to get more BTC, since I was not in a position to buy more with my money.
In all fairness, the Ethtrade.org worked pretty good for a couple of months. I kept most of my BTC at that point over there, and even tho' they allowed just a partial withdrawal, and a really really bad and slow support team I've had some profits from their service.
Ofcourse, because of the Bitcoin Segwit activation, and all the hard fork stuff, I figured that it's probably not too safe to keep the BTC on their server, and decided to withdraw as much as I could from it.
I managed to withdraw a fair amount of BTC and kept it in my wallet, but at that point could take the rest of at least 0.1 BTC.
I actually tried to reinvest and withdraw several times, but they didn't allow it. It should've been a clear clue for me at that point that something is wrong.
Today I tried to access the site and withdraw the rest of my BTC, and was really surprised when I saw this.
At first I thought that they were just under maintenance, but quickly enough found out that they actually CLOSED their service for good.
I immediately went to my email to check for any warnings - NONE!
After checking their official Facebook page the first thing I saw was mostly this comment from them:
- We stop working with this Facebook page and start working at new project with BLC on our new link!
Please follow us and ask all your questions on new page https://www.facebook.com/Crypto-BullCoin-109461313089972
Thank you and kind regards,
Ethtrade Team*
Soon enough I realized that something is wrong and found this explanation:
The Cryptocurrency market is getting more complicated the day after day.
Many major precedents have taking a place within the last few months. Almost all the funds you deposited within those period and which were sent for trading and work were almost all lost, up to 90% of loses. Today, thanks to Crypto Partner it become possible to reduce the loses to only 60%, which gives us a way for further business development by converting all available assets into bullcoin. It was decided to switch to another type of work, namely to the cryptocurrency of our partners, in which you will manage all the processes by yourself (someone can just store coins and be involved in mining, or someone can trade or both- you and only you will be able to make such decisions)
I really barfed a bit at that point...
Since their website is not working I highly doubt that I can get even the 40% of my investment back, especially after reading some of the comments from other people where they cannot convert their assets to the new BLC coin or that they got only 1% of their investment on the new account..
Here's one random comment:
But, to keep this short, the thing that pissed me off the most is the fact that they didn't send not even ONE e-mail of being under attack or warning their users of switching to a new coin.
The fact that they didn't respect the next users agreements:
_6.3. Company is obliged to:
- timely and in full inform Users about all changes and developments;
- accrue financial remuneration to Users as a result of cooperation with the Ethtrade platform website (regular accruals of financial profit and remuneration for participation in the affiliate program) and process Users’ applications for deposits and withdrawals of funds.
- Financial mutual settlements
8.6. Withdrawal of funds is made according to a manually processed User’s application.
8.7. Withdrawal waiting time may take 3-5 days after application for funds withdrawal is created and confirmed by the User.
8.8. User is notified and agrees that waiting period for withdrawal declared in the present Agreement may be prolonged due to payment processors operation failure, as well as in case of force-major. The User acknowledges that these factors are beyond competence and responsibility of the Service_
I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed obviously, and I'm really glad that I managed to take at least most of my BTC before this horror, but at the same time I can't believe that they are trying to make a hit and run and still ask from people to invest in their new service , which is completely bull**** as the name suggests.
Please dear Steemians, don't trust them and be very careful with other services like that, because stuff like that happen without any warning and there is no way to make them pay back.
Sorry for this mad post, currently I can't write nothing smart. I'll update as soon as I can about this situation.
ETHTRADE AND BULLCOIN ARE SCAMS!! DON'T TRUST THEM!!
Thank you for sharing these
hey man, there was a sequel to this whole story :)
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@dimitrij/ethtrade-scam-part-ii-the-retrieving-of-funds-by-ethtrade-support-scam-scam-scam
Totally agree! Thank you for this
no problem..
there was actually a continuation of the story :D
you can read it here:
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@dimitrij/ethtrade-scam-part-ii-the-retrieving-of-funds-by-ethtrade-support-scam-scam-scam