My two satoshis on the controversy surrounding the WEX pump

in #bitcoin6 years ago (edited)

TL;DR: They have earned my trust more than most exchanges. 0 problems with #crypto withdrawals. I suspect the recent pump in the USD market was primarily whales showing their support for WEX's decision to add a BTC/USDT pair. I also just realized they are finally adding the ability to buy the market and use stop-losses, another reason for whales to be supportive of them. However the situation is becoming more uncertain as I learn about a likely sale of the exchange, a situation with WEX codes backed by nothing, and ongoing withdrawal problems.

WEX-coming soon.png

The following was in response to a video from @dalinanderson.

It wasn't necessarily anyone that worked for WEX that busted with the Mt. Gox funds (at their exchange). WEX claims Alexander Vinnik was just a user. They also came back after the FBI raid with about 70% of our funds (the other 30% in tokens that started trading at ~60% of the corresponding coins' value... FBI got the fiat, probably no crypto). Since then, they've been in the process of paying us back in a similar way that bitfinex somewhat recently finished doing(and C-CEX is in the process of doing with XVG). Some of the tokens used in the re-funding process actually got bought up to WAY past the 1:1 ratio already. (https://wex.nz/tokens - NVCET went up to 4900:1 and NMCET to 325:1, for example... yes, I realize this supports the theory of manipulation, but what do they have to gain in that situation?).

NVCET.png

I've been using the exchange occasionally since well before the FBI got involved, and I've never had a problem with crypto withdrawals(something I can't say for poloniex or bittrex). I noticed people saying that fiat withdrawals had recently been adjusted to 20%(all I see on the withdrawal page is "WEX code - 0%" likely because I'm not verified), which was causing the prices to trade at a premium vs. USD. However, it's now at a discount vs USDT, a market they just added. The downtime I've noticed/experienced has been minimal compared to literally every one I've used except bittrex(excluding the FBI downtime). They are one of the longest running exchanges, never been hacked... gotta give them that too. Since before the FBI got involved, it was one of my favorite places to hang out. "Bitcoin betting" was pretty cool when I first got involved in crypto, and the trollbox isn't insanely trolly because they require people to hold at least $1000 there to talk in the trollbox. I was fairly confident they were going to be back with my $1000 after the FBI raid the whole time they were down, proven right in the end. The recent downtime today after the pump to 9k went exactly as they planned and announced, unlike a lot of other situations I can think of with other exchanges...

I give them the benefit of the doubt. If they wanted to exit scam, it seems to me that it would have made a lot more sense to do it before bringing the exchange back online and buying back a good portion of the tokens they created to fix the situation. At the very least, I would think they would wait until after the next bull run to do something like that. Although the total trading volume is minimal compared to the major exchanges, I wouldn't be overly surprised if the price action there is just an indication of what's coming in the very near future on every exchange. In my experience, the only real problem at WEX has been the inability to take advantage of arbitrage opportunities because the fiat withdrawal fee was either too high or it was impossible to get the profit and subsequently transfer the money out without buying another altcoin that's also trading at a premium, but now with the USDT/USD and BTC/USDT markets, it should be a lot more possible for whales to take advantage of those opportunities. I fully expect they will, as I suspect the pump was mainly due to whales showing their support for WEX's decision to add the BTC/USDT pair.

I looked more into recent WEX withdrawal issues recently after it was suggested by a twitter user, and this is their latest update (translated from Russian): "Deadlines for the inclusion of BTC, LTC, ETH, BCH, DSH are transferred due to ongoing technical work on the servers." Withdrawals for other cryptocurrencies and USDT are already enabled(according to their twitter anyway). I've been trying to see for myself using PPC for a couple hours, to no avail yet.

Update: I spent some time in the russian trollbox which produced the following:
WEX-sale.png
and https://coin.radio/en/2018/07/13/exclusive-crypto-exchange-wex-to-face-2-6-mln-legal-fine/

There was also talk(from a user of the exchange) about producing an announcement which involved the redemption of the aforementioned WEX tokens, so it wouldn't surprise me if they make an announcement about the redemption of ALL tokens(perhaps in addition to a sale of the exchange) to help prevent additional similar lawsuits. Of course, since it was Russian translated to English, it was difficult to understand exactly what everyone was saying. Hopefully for bitcoin's sake, they will also clarify the withdrawal situation on twitter sooner rather than later.

Another update: I'm becoming less certain about WEX's future the more I find out... Coming from supposedly the WEX CEO on facebook: "which means that there are a lot of [WEX] codes on the market and they were simply resold, someone just sold a lot of codes backed with nothing, and now all those who bought those codes want to buy bitcoin, exchange rate goes up, as very few wish to sell."

With the depressing price action, I've not been motivated to post or make any videos lately. Still bullish for now though, and I suspect anywhere between 6k and it's current price of 6245 at GDAX is a great buy in the short/medium-term.

Another slightly imperfect harmonic pattern (bullish crab):
PotentialBullishBat.png

BTCUSDSHORTS finally starting to follow through with my prediction after breaking support recently: BTCUSDSHORTS07132018.png

BTCUSDLONGS looking healthy after breaking the resistance I've been watching: BTCUSDLONGS07132018.png
(Screenshots from livestream on Twitch and Youtube)

-Tom(@MyEmpireOfShit) Twitter | Tradingview | YouTube | iDC INC's twitter | Facebook | iDC INC's Facebook

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