How Kucoin exchange is "stealing" my cryptocurrency

When I first became interested in cryptocurrency in December 2017, the bitcoin bull run was about to peak at an explosive $20 000. When I bought my first bitcoin in early December, I knew nothing about the technical or trading side of it. In fact I knew nothing at all, and was just learning to buy some bitcoin with fiat at a local exchange in my country. I was very inspired and as the price climbed that memorable month I saw my investment grow.

As I learned more, I found out that there was very little volume or liquidity on my local exchange and that there were other exchanges around the world that offered better trading opportunities as well as many more diverse cryptocurrencies or altcoins. In my eagerness to have as many coins as possible, like a kid who wants one of every sweet in the corner candy store, I eagerly worked out how to move my bitcoin to these other exchanges. One of them was Binance and the other was KUcoin exchange. I learned that it cost me quite a bit in fees to move bitcoin, ethereum and even litecoin, though the latter was slightly cheaper so I bought that and transferred it. Only later did I come across still cheaper transfer fees for coins like ADA Cardano, and some with zero fees.

The Binance transfers went well enough and I still have some currency there, though have moved it into stable coins, from which I trade if I see a dip that looks like a potential profit-making opportunity. I used to use USDT Tether, but the FUD really put me off, after it transpired that Tether were never properly audited and there was so much controversy over the fact that they may not have the fiat to back the massive printing of tokens that they perform regularly, in the billions of dollars. So despite there being much more volume and liquidity on the tokens traded for Tether, I now only use TUSD and Paxos Standard as stable coins on Binance and recommend you do likewise. Tether is too risky at this stage in my opinion, and in the crypto market it is sentiment that is more important than even fundamentals and technical analysis. FUD will make or break a token in these markets. It’s all about confidence in what is otherwise just an idea in some developer’s mind.

Now the main lesson I have learned and the main concern I have today is with KUcoin exchange, based in Singapore or somewhere in Asia. It’s hard to say sometimes with the smaller fly-by-night exchanges. But at the time I knew nothing and still have a lot to learn. Well there were some inviting new tokens available on KUcoin so I moved some crypto there in order to buy them. This was the peak of the altcoin bull run in January 2018 when all the alts were at their ATH, not that I knew anything about that. Nor did anyone else really. These are the kind of things you learn in hindsight, as you look back and see the dizzy heights the tokens reached in price compared to their current dismal prices.

KUcoin exchange is still going strong and I still have a few small tokens on the exchange, but they are now worth peanuts, or miniscule fractions of what they were worth when I bought them at the ATH or peak in their prices. Nevertheless, I was always hopeful that the bull market would one day return and my tokens would regain their value. I would lose nothing I thought because they will regain their value in a year or two, perhaps three, and I would possibly even make a profit if I just HODL. That’s what keeps many of us around in the crypto industry – we are trapped here holding a bag of tokens waiting for the price to return to our buy-in range so we can at least break even. And this is not just for sh1tcoins as they are fondly called but even for bitcoin and steem, the top currencies in the market today. All of them are down around 85% from their ATH price back at the height of the bull market in January 2018.

Well I still check on my little altcoin token on KUcoin exchange occasionally, but to my dismay recently I have discovered that KUcoin has de-listed some of my tokens while I wasn’t watching. For example, back in January 2018 at the highest prices ever, I bought some QSP Quantstamp and some RDN Raiden Network tokens there. They were shilled by Ian Balina (now found out to be a mega shill) as promising ICO tokens and had just been released maybe only weeks or months earlier. I was under the impression as a noob that I was buying them at low prices since they were the most recent releases. Well prices fell almost to zero this past year but worst of all, KU has de-listed both tokens so that they can no longer be traded but have to be removed from the exchange or face total loss. QSP is curiously still traded on Binance, so when I went to transfer mine from the one exchange to the other, low and behold, I found that I could not even move them. They are lost forever.

The reason is this. I had bought such small amounts that they are now either all used up in the transfer fee or the amount I want to move is below the minimum amount one can actually move. Admittedly when I bought 3 RDN and 38 QSP both for the price of two large pizzas each in my country – about ZAR400 for 4 pizzas – I had no idea it would come to this. I am talking about very small amounts of money in one sense but to me it was a total of 4 large pizzas, and I like pizza. And they are gone. To move the 38 QSP I have to pay 30 just for transfer fees, so that leaves me with 8 QSP, but the minimum amount you can transfer is 30 so I’m stuck. There go my QSP forever, all 38 of them which cost me ZAR218. The same applies to my 3 RDN. The minimum withdrawal amount is 4 and the transfer fee is 2, so my 3 are lost to me forever at ZAR200. Well that was a big learning curve.

And it goes on because in May last year I decided to buy the newly released Trinity TNC token, on the NEO blockchain. Admittedly I only bought 30, since it was a Trinity, and that cost me about the price of a soft drink, or literally peanuts, so no real loss. But the tragedy is that KUcoin exchange has now delisted them too. And I thought it was a sterling NEO sister project – you know from the Matrix movie – NEO and Trinity. Well at least I can move 29 of them with a transfer fee of only 1. Now I just need to find a place to move them to, like another exchange that still trades them. What a lesson. It has taught me not to invest in these risky altcoins and to stick to the king bitcoin and his main entourage, like ethereum, litecoin and steem. Even NEO has lost my respect in recent weeks and I used to enjoy getting GAS from my staking or HODLing on Binance. Now there is too much FUD even over NEO so I have let them go for stable tokens and I will buy the dip in my top tokens in coming days or weeks. Learn from my experience not to invest in these lesser known coins particularly on lesser known exchanges. About 90% of all altcoins are duds that will go to zero apparently, but the few that remain will be the "Amazon" and "Google" of the crypto stock market or the internet, once the "Myspace" and "Pets.com" fall by the wayside. Let’s see if I can rescue Trinity and get that soft drink she promised me.