A Week of Frustrations
It's been a while since I had a moment to update everyone on how life has been and what's been new with me and the family. Overall work wise, everything is great...solid and moving forward quite well. Everyone has been really excited about Thanksgiving and the holidays coming up our way, we have plans to have the whole family together under one roof this week and that is a huge blessing because its a rare thing to have happen every year.
With all the great things happening, sadly I have to report so many fails in crypto this week for my family that I am honestly in shock with the greed and financial losses that hit myself and my family for our limited financial holdings.
You might want to read this in detail so you guys are protected and maybe avoid the issues that hit our family through crypto this week, some services you may use that we all have trusted...even myself seem to be slipping into a realm to be very careful about!!
The Bitpay/Amazon Fiasco and Financial Losses Due to Incompetence
This past week I was so excited, finally saved enough mining earnings for the last few months to finally get on the famous Bitmain waiting list for a new Antminer L3+ to kick up this families earning potentials for the future of crypto rising like we firmly believe will inevitably happen.
....sadly that excitement turned into my first crypto horror story!!
Due to the long wait and having to deal with customs to get my shipment in from China, I decided to go ahead and pay up a little more to find a US based local reseller of the L3+. I spent 2 days really researching and asking around but settled on a seller on Amazon that seemed to have the miner I needed locally here in the USA.
So I placed the order for $3200 via my Bitpay card and spent a day or two happily content that I just invested something that may help this family rise a little more in weekly income before the holidays got close. Then to my horror I come to find a few days later that the shipment for this never was sent out. So after digging around my Amazon message center I found a message from the seller asking for more money for customs and also asking me to fudge on the paper work to make it cheaper on them and on myself?
The whole point in ordering this was because these people listed having these miners IN HAND here in the USA but clearly they were reselling off the back of orders they had coming in from Bitmain and located in some undisclosed location outside of the USA, needless to say that was not the deal I signed up for so I had to cancel the order.
I think this image says it all, Bitpay once stood for crypto crytpo users..now no different than your average traditional banking system about the greenbacks over its customers!
We had a slight headache getting it cancelled but eventually the seller honored this and expressed that they understand they should have been more transparent about the location and fact they didn't actually have the miners in hand. But then came major issues and a loss of our $3200 and we can't figure out if its Bitpay or Amazon screwing us at this stage.
Between phone calls back and forth all week, we found out that on PRE-AUTHORIZED HOLDS Bitpay has a very strange policy that even regular fiat banks don't do. They require a 30 day hold on the funds unless the merchant hand faxes a release of funds with all our personal info. On Amazon's side they will not do such a thing due to the rights of privacy for its customers. So what I found out this week about Bitpay is this. A crypto based company is more invasive about privacy than a non crypto company. I also come to find out when it comes to refunds or violations of purchases scammy sellers that Bitpay will not easily honor your funds to be returned. They have become worse than any banking system I have ever dealt with and I warn people if they use their service to be very cautious what payouts you initiate because getting your funds back may be next to near impossible to have returned.
As of right now Bitpay will not help us out on this matter, they feel its not their business to help us out with our funds even though they have received all the proof that Amazon has fully cancelled this hold on our funds. Now they literally hang up on us when we call their customer service number, not one cross word from us has remotely come about yet so there is a huge lack of competence in that company all the sudden to care to do what is right. At this stage I have no clue if we will ever see that money back, way they told us its basically none of their concern if Amazon won't release info of ours via fax so we are out the $3200 and seriously looking into other legal routes to obtain our funds, which will probably cost more than that money is worth.
This is one point in crypto where greed vs what crypto is meant to be about is being lost. I have been with Bitpay a good while, spent a lot of money to help them out financially but to be dealt with such a large amount of funds stuck in a state they know clearly should be returned to us is beyond infuriating for us at this stage. So as of now we can see our funds locked up, might return after XMAS but they have literally ruined the coming holidays for my kids, so I am a done customer for life and will make sure people are aware of how they work from this point on.
Then Came the $30 Bitcoin Transaction Fee
We all know Bitcoin has been having struggles, the Segwit2x issue has been a mess. The amount of people jumping all over Bitcoin has slowed the network down. But as much as a purist Bitcoin advocate as I am, after all this mess with Bitpay and then a day later to find out I moved $60 bucks and got only half of that transaction on the other end due to a $30 miner fee is really making me wonder what is really going on lately in crypto.
There is a serious need right now that Bitcoin gets its act together and do something for the users. I already feel pretty robbed of my $3200 locked up mess in Bitpay but to have that kind of miner fee hit me for simply moving from an exchange to my wallet was like the kick me when I am down moment I did not need this week.
We had the exchange look into the matter and they provided the fee info that was attached to the TX and sadly it was what it was, an overly high miner fee just happened to hit us during a mempool issue spike.
I don't know right now if its greed, or just some growing pains here but if we don't remember those roots to do this for the individual, then I really don't even see the point of us keeping at supporting Bitcoin anymore when there are so many other options not doing this to users. Maybe its time I realize that Bitcoin is only good as a horders coins, a store of value for savings because its obviously no longer at all valid for day to day transactions like it was when I first got into this space.
I pray Bitcoin gets these things under order soon, consider my $30 a donation to the cause to lowering these damn fees soon!!!
Lets Just End This Bad Week By Stealing Also My Mining Earnings!!!
If all that wasn't enough, it continued to hit us in crypto with even more bad luck.
Most of you on here know I am also a miner, hence the loss I am dealing with through Amazon/Bitpay lol. Lately I have been mining through Nicehash and using a reuse address from Shapeshift to convert on the fly to LTC in order to save myself from the BTC fees lately. The reuse address I been using from Shapeshift has been working like a charm for well over a month, never missed a beat and funds came in no issue ever.
Well as of Friday that too no longer works and my usual extra $100 a week from mining ended up not showing up in my LTC wallet. I checked and rechecked the address and even the TX on that sent funds from Nicehash but all checked out fine but Shapeshift just didn't exchange it for some reason.
So I put in a ticket and finally got word back from Shapeshift that they don't do exchanges like I am doing and that is why I didn't receive my funds. I kind of get it but its odd because I never seen a word on their site about not doing it from mining pools to them and I been doing it this way for months with no issue but that is their official stance on it.
Shapeshift is a good company so I am not really complaining about them, its just kind of the kicker to the way our week has been going financially in crypto but Shapeshift stated they will do a refund. Not seen this refund now over 24 hours but I do have faith in this place seeing I have been using them for well over a year now but I wouldn't be telling you the truth if I wasn't sitting here sweating it right now with the way our week has been.
So What In The Hell Is Going On Here With Crypto??
Listen I wouldn't be just questioning this out loud if I was just basing this week's experience alone, but What in the hell is going on here with crypto? See its not just this week alone, I also have cloud mining issues with HASHFLARE, they cut out the lifetime contracts on us, then I go to make my first payout and they rose the minimum payout higher so most of us lower guys can't use even our funds on there (which would be nice seeing this week I been left with no money at all in hand due to crypto). I also got scammed on 2 other fake cloud mining contracts out there that friends suggested but turned out a few days later them and myself got scammed due to the sites being taken down. Not a huge loss but financially every dime counts around this time of year.
I am starting to question crypto hard right now, and I work in a crypto project so if I am seeing these issues on myself I can only imagine what might be going on out there to other users. Bitpay, well they screwed us and I clearly have lost trust for that company. Maybe if they did us right and returned our funds and changed their policy to a more reasonable state like even banks do with a 7-10 pre-authorized hold, then maybe I might use them again. Right now though I am just not so sure who I can trust in crypto with my finances after the week of insight I just had.
CRYPTO IS MEANT TO FREE US, NOT FURTHER ENSLAVE AND ROB US
If you know me you know this, I am fiat free in my life. I came to crypto for the movement against the federal reserve, I also live 100% on crypto. I work in crypto as a marketer, I have lived and breathed this movement early on with lots of sacrifice to be one of many to support the movement so we can get this to the mainstream.
I am concerned though right now about the whole space here. It looks to me we are turning right back to the old systems I am highly against. We are manipulating, using it to scam, we are stealing, and we are getting way too greedy in how we conduct business on average joes in this system. I know its not every where like that but I think we as a community better get the issues I am seeing in check or we will see serious regulations go into play and this opportunity before you could very well be a thing of the past for us as individuals.
Will I survive this past week? Yea I survive everything but I am concerned very much for other users after seeing what I seen in Bitpay so I felt its time I spoke up because this is definitely wrong what is being done to my family. Bitpay is actually withholding funds meant to be used towards income so its even more than what is being with held from us, its also stalling us from earnings as well. We will survive though, might be a very simple Christmas for the family but eventually we have hopes the money will return but if it doesn't I guess we need to head into the legal stage seeing that is our money no matter how they view it. I just hope everyone is careful with companies like this and reads more about their policies, though I think this one is a bit over the top for holds.
Just be very careful with your finances here, seems we might need to always be on our toes and not trust even the trusted companies in crypto anymore....
