Today we have taken the decision to remove all of our assets from the Bitker Exchange. The reason for this decision is that we no longer feel comfortable recommending Bitker as a place to buy and/or trade MaidSafeCoin.
As background, MAID was first listed on Bitker on 18th April. However, in the short period since then, the exchange has continued to suffer from a number of technical problems. These have been compounded by abysmal customer service and we continue to be unable to get any clear communication from their operations team about the route forward. For the majority of the time after the listing, the functionality to trade MAID has been broken and they appear to be unwilling to inform us of their plans.
We will not (cannot) go into some of the details here due to a combination of factors, including NDA’s that were signed before the listing. But unfortunately their actions have created a fatal erosion of trust. Put simply, we have no confidence at this stage that they are competent. The interests of the SAFE Network community are of paramount importance to everyone here at MaidSafe and therefore we cannot recommend that anyone uses their services after our experiences.
It is very important to us that we are only recommend exchanges that value MaidSafeCoin holders and traders. We can appreciate that this may be frustrating for some (although the indications are that very few people were actually using the exchange) - not least ourselves, as we spent a significant amount of time in discussions and due diligence before we ultimately took the decision to proceed with Bitker in the first place. You will still be able to buy and trade MaidSafeCoin on HitBTC, Poloniex and Bittrex International and as ever, we will continue to explore options to add additional exchanges.
In the long run, only decentralized open source exchanges will survive. Centralized exchanges involve too much trust and are too open to outside interference.
hopefully @Audity yes. They keep telling us that they are in the process of fixing the exchange but they aren’t able to give us any timescales at all. From their Bitker-overseas Telegram channel, they seem to be having widespread issues with many customers but insist that they are trying to fix things and haven’t shut up shop yet.
For what it’s worth I haven’t experienced this problem @Audity, are you sure your credentials are correct? Logging in seems to be about the only thing that does work at the moment, unfortunately you can’t do much once you have gained access.
A combination of factors; volume, location/legal jurisdiction, did they have existing Omni integrations, listing fees and responsiveness during the onboarding process.
In the end, all that matters is “when we trust them with our money, are they going to lose it?” Everything else is window dressing. Personal integrity is more than everything when doing any kind of business.
At this point, Poloniex and Bittrex International are the only decent exchanges that list MAID. If you live in the US that limits you to Poloniex. I’m curious as to what level (i.e., release of Fleming, Maxwell or Beta) needs to be reached before Bittrex US would consider relisting.
Since Binance is following in Bittrex’s shoes by splitting into US vs. non-US exchanges, now might be a good time to approach them.
Also, Kucoin seems to be a decent exchange. I’ve also heard positive things about Huobi, and a friend of mine is a strategy director at Kraken. Has MaidSafe approached any of these exchanges?
Hmm. Under what jurisdiction is Bitker? Is there no regulation? Financial authority to report the problem? Legal consequences of not paying out funds within a certain time from request?
Cannot be a small sum if it was liquidity for a market, so seems we’d like to have it back.
I didn’t realize it was even a bilateral agreement of any kind. I thought they just decided to list MAID one day and the dev team was like yay lets give them a shout out.
ya I have heard its like 100k to list your coin on binance. I think this is a new phenomenon though. Like who paid to get DOGE listed? I think until recently exchanges tried to pick coins that looked like non-scams with potential. Now they just like whoever comes with a suitcase of cash your in.
Still I would not think a smaller exchange like Bitker is in any position to make demands. Like who is gonna pay much for such small liquidity? Thats why I kinda thought they were just like hey MAID sounds like a coin that might bring us new customers lets list it without even bother to contact the devs.