Why Do Major Crypto Exchanges Lock Steem Wallets When The Price Rises Significantly? Respect To @blocktrades For Holding the Fort.
For many of us, the operating procedures of online crypto-exchanges can sometimes be a mysterious thing that can only be explained by Magic and Crystal Balls... One thing I'd really like to know is exactly why it is that Bittrex and other major exchanges always seem to lock their Steem wallets whenever the price skyrockets...
I've been using Steemit and Steem regularly for a year and I can recall at least 2 other times when the price of Steem spiked and I went to trade some of mine only to find that I was locked out of all the wallets on exchanges that I could find that support Steem. Once can be explained as a chance event of timing, but 3 times is a pattern that suggests a causal connection.
The current situation is that HitBTC.com and Bittrex.com both have their Steem and SBD wallets offline due to 'technical maintenance'. I am currently unable to login to Poloniex at all because they have failed to send me a confirmation email that's part of their login process. Once again, the ONLY exchange service I can find that will actually exchange Steem is @blocktrades! To big respect to blocktrades!
Blocktrades has consistently supported trades in Steem, while other exchanges fail at key moments. I recall speaking with them about this issue and was told that often the wallets on exchanges go offline because new code is needed to make them work after upgrades are made to the cryptocurrency they support. Blocktrades appears to be able to get these updates and implement them faster than the other exchanges - which i commend!
I do still find it interesting though that these events appear to be so synchronised with high price periods. If I was running an exchange and had a stockpile of certain coins that were undervalued, wouldn't it be to my advantage to shut down trading for those coins while the price is high to allow me to sell my own stocks off without any competition? I think that is possibly true.
What do you think? Are you taking advantage of the price increases to sell some Steem or are you Hodling? ;)
Got any inside tips as to what's going on? Do share them with us all - as we each learn more, we can do more to help us all.
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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Have you tried BitShares?
It is a decentralized exchange. @lukestrokes has talked about it.
I believe that @blocktrades is a front end to that system.
You just have to get used to trading virtual, virtual currency.
Which is probably a lot more accurate than what you think you are doing over at bittrex. As in, if you do a trade on bittrex for some bitcoin, you think you have some bitcoin, but what you really have is a claim on bitcoin. Or, a virtual crypto-currency.
I have briefly looked at Bitshares, yes - I'll take another look soon.
Decentralized exchanges will become more and more important and appreciated as time moves on.
I think you are right, yes.
I prefer bitshares before bittrex since they have a much higher minimum withdraw amount on bittrex.
Oh ok, thanks for the tip. I am currently preferring Bitfinex as they have EOS on there and also some more advanced trading types - but I'll check out Bitshares more, for sure.
I would use bitfinex but they don't allow US transactions any longer.
They do this to ward off the heavy volume, so it doesn't bog down their servers. Something all exchanges suffer from, but will be working on fixing heavily in 2018 and beyond.
Indeed, Steem is that fast!
3, 2, 1, Done...!
Their systems cant handle it ;-)
Ha ha, Steemit is decentralized, and operates on the fastest blockchain technology there is... the exchanges are centralized and run on old server technology. 🐳
Doesn't that effectively meant that at peak trading times they become useless? I'm not sure I buy that argument - server rental is a tiny fraction of the cost of the profits they are losing (unless they are actually making massive profits through being able to trade their own reserves at high prices with less competition).
The volume they experience is months ahead of the load they can technically bear. They would need server farms on par with the likes of the major financial trading platforms, and maybe someday, on par with the likes of Google and Facebook as this growth rate.