HitBTC Faces Flak For Problems Related To Withdrawal And Transaction Fees

It is not uncommon for the crypto community to witness multiple incidents where holders and users of digital assets have been negatively impacted due to technical or man-made glitches. A similar incident occurred again when multiple customers reported problems while dealing with HitBTC, a popular cryptocurrency exchange. They got wind of the issue after the exchange was hit by a whirlwind of customer complaints, many of them related to withdrawal and transaction fees. One such customer, the CEO of Cryptocurrency.Market, Tai Zen, tweeted,

“I highly recommend staying away from @hitbtc at this time because you never know if you can withdraw your coins from their exchange or not. I do not see any reason why you CAN NOT withdraw popular coins such as @steemit @cosmos @tezos @helloiconworld.”

HitBTC, as a response to Zen’s tweet, tweeted,

“We are sorry that you feel this way. Our platform provides hundreds of markets by integrating foreign software for each asset. This software requires regular technical maintenance and sometimes takes longer than expected.”

This response met with tepid reactions from the rest of the community, as many of them labelled the exchange to be ‘diplomatic’ or ‘politician-like’. Another Twitter user, CryptoshiSk, complained,

“The worst thing is that they even do not allow to move coins from main to trading account although this is just internal transfer and has nothing to do with wallet maintenance. Real scam. be careful .”

HitBTC was quick to respond to this too and said,

“Transfers between the main and trading accounts are sometimes affected by the maintenance as well. Can you let us know whether there’s an asset you’re interested in particular? Thanks in advance.”

However, this was not the end of the complaints list. More grievances came to the fore, which were focused mainly on the ‘exorbitant’ transaction fees charged by HitBTC. As of now, HitBTC charges a withdrawal fee of $13.73 for every transaction while Bitstamp, another popular cryptocurrency exchange, offers the service free of cost. To put things into perspective again, the fee imposed on a single XRP withdrawal on HitBTC costs $2.78 or 6.378 XRP, while at the same time, Bitso, a direct competitor, charges no money for the withdrawals.

Rishma Banerjee

Rishma is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and has a special place in her life for sifting through all sorts of random trivia, thank you very much.