In the world of cryptocurrency you will find a lot of scams and a lot of promises that wont be kept. You have to be very cautious about everything, but when (new) exchanges offer you free listing if you win their community voting contest, you got nothing to lose right? Well, not quite…
Bitindia's Community Voting Contest
From the 5th till the 18th of February 2018, Bitindia, (a new exchange from India) held a community voting contest for free listing of coins as stated on their Facebook page, website and twitter at the time. This contest consisted out of 2 voting rounds instead of 1 round, and had a duration of 13 days instead of 7 days as initially promised. These were small adjustments that took place during the first voting round, but this article is not about that. Several cryptocurrency projects won this voting for listing contest.
The popular privacy cryptocurrency project called; “DeepOnion” ended up first in both rounds with over 20,000 votes in the first round and over 8,000 votes in the second round after checking for fake votes. Bitindia got promoted a lot by the winners on several social media platforms, and a member of the DeepOnion community even went to the Blockchain conference in India where Bitindia had a stand. Free listing in return for massive exposure from the contestants sounds like a win-win situation for all parties. This is only if the exchange, (Bitindia in this case) keeps its word, and this is exactly where it went wrong.
Bitindia charging for listing after projects won
On the 5th of April 2018, Deeper (the main moderator from the official DeepOnion forums) shared with his community that the listing on Bitindia would most likely cost them 5 bitcoins which is roughly 35,000 USD worth of Bitcoins today. So instead of being listed for free, Bitindia is now asking the number 1 winner of the voting contest for roughly 35,000 USD in order to be listed on their new exchange. But, I hear you thinking; “Yeah but this is not officially announced, so maybe its a mistake?”, well this is exactly what I thought as well, so I did some research.
Doing My Own Research
I have contacted Bitindia multiple times via Facebook messenger, twitter and via telegram, but they never replied to my messages and even banned me and several other members of the DeepOnion community on their Telegram channel, after asking whether the fee was correct or not. Smells a bit fishy right? Well, keep reading.
To gather more information, I decided to contact the team of Experience Points (2nd winner of the voting contest) and asked them about what Bitindia said to them. Apparently they are charging them 5 bitcoins for listing as well, but this can be reduced if the tech team of Experience points do all the work to get them on the exchange. They even said that DeepOnion already paid the 5 bitcoins, in order to convince Experience Points to make the payment as well. DeepOnion never paid Bitindia and never will, since they won the contest fair and square and even promoted Bitindia tremendously. Experience points moderators got also banned from the telegram channel of Bitindia after asking for clarification.
In addition to above; This is from the XIN marketing team (3rd winner of the Bitindia Voting Contest);
“We have had discussions with Bitindia since the beginning of the voting and we were convinced that this would be a good solution. A few weeks ago, we received on scant requests only scant information and received only in phone calls and never in writing the information that we are only listed once we pay $ 15,000.
We also cleared and accepted this amount in the advertising budget. After that, we answered further questions and provided them with all the information that was asked. One week ago we learned that it would be very complicated to integrate because their system is designed for ERC20 tokens and it is not intended to integrate completely custom blockchains like ours and if we want to be listed we have to pay another 60.000 USD to be listed.
These talks were very cheeky and there was no negotiation room. After much deliberation and after further discussions with Bitindia, we decided that we would not do that.”
The Purpose Of A Community Voting Contest?
What is the purpose of a community voting contest if you charge the winners between 35,000 and 75,000 USD in order to get listed AFTER winning the contest? Simple; These communities and their range on social media platforms is huge, so if you give them the feeling that they can win free listing, then they will indirectly do the marketing for you and promote your new exchange. In the meantime you pay for a stand on a blockchain conference to gain more trust from the communities and then you ask them to pay you for the listing, scamming them.
Bitindia is ignoring all messages towards them on all their social media platforms, and they even say that the listing fee is because the contest was for ERC-20 tokens only and not coins, because their exchange is designed for ERC-20 tokens and is not intended to integrate other coins, while the information on their voting contest clearly said “Coins/Tokens”.
So in short they are not responsive to questions regarding this matter, they charge between 35,000-75,000 USD for listing AFTER projects won their voting contest, they lie about that other parties already paid the fee, they deny that the voting rounds were for coins as well and they ban everyone who asks about this on their telegram channel.
My conclusion is that Bitindia is a fraudulent exchange that is scamming people. Make sure to upvote this article and share this to spread awareness! Be very cautious with them!
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EDIT 8th of April 2018:
Its now 24 hours after I published this article and this is what happend and what I want to share with you all.
Bitindia is now saying that one of the Community Coin Voting winners; DeepOnion, is spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and doubt) and that it was very clear from the beginning that the voting rounds were for token listings only. I will post some screenshots from their Facebook page, and please tell me whether they are blind or just really adding lies on top of lies.
They even tweeted from their official Twitter to promote DeepOnion for the listing. Why would you do this if you know that they can not be listed anyways, because its for tokens only?
Bitindia banned people instantly from their Telegram group who ask for clarification about this matter and they even protected their Tweets, so only confirmed followers have access to their Tweets and Profile page. Why would you do this when only 1 random guy wrote an article about your exchange? They definitely have something to hide.
