a short backstory:
Once MTGOX scammed me on more than 500 BTC, and from my own experience, I understand how deeply any scams can hurt people and community as the whole. I literary couldn't look back into cryptocurrencies for years, and thousands of people had a similar reaction. They shared their experience with family and friends, creating a negative network effect hurting whole cryptocurrency world. For newcomers, any attempt playing a crypto game feels like walking through a vast minefield.
Obviously, the list of scam sites in crypto is very long ( for example https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@sumanth1435/bit-coins-scam-site
), but what hurts crypto is that these scam exchanges being listed on every site related to market cap, and in consequence, often they are quoted in media about prices especially in relation to new coins.
We all sometimes self victims to our cognitive biases, so I am not surprised that a new person can put a lot of trust to sites which names are listed everywhere.
I think HITBTC is a primary example of such shady site.
I don't want to talk about problems with withdrawal from them, as the Internet is full of such stories.
Also with their financial instrument ICO - IOY clearly something fishy going on.
All their ICO IOY coins don't exist they are all issued by HITBTC, so HITBTC is working as a printing money machine. That's a business I suppose everybody would like to be in
HITBTC can set any price they want for any ICO coin listed on their site.
I believe they highly manipulate the price, so if they ever decide to convert their IOY to real coin, they can buy that coin much cheaper from other exchanges.
I know we can't fight careless people giving money away to scam websites, but please stop quoting them and linking to them. This site should be removed from any site which is listing coins prices
Every person scammed on cryptocurrencies will share knowledge with their friends, which will hurt directly you, me, and everybody in the crypto world.
I don't have many followers here, but I hope it will save at least a single people from getting scammed out of their money.