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Mexican Bitcoin Exchange Bitso Offers One Rate, Delivers Another

Last Updated
P. H. Madore
Last Updated

To the tune of around 15 bitcoins, a Hacked.com subscriber wrote to this reporter and asked him to warn others of how the system at Bitso works. He saw a trend that he wanted to capitalize on, and he had 430+ Ethereum to work with. He put them all on order for Bitcoin, and was told he would receive around 30 bitcoins. Then when the orders were through, he only had a little over 14 bitcoins.

As he tells his story:

5:50pm July 20, BTC was ascending against ETH, so I decided to change 437 ETH to BTC fast. Those  ETH were in BITSO in my Mexican account. It was going to be maybe half an hour to put the order to transfer to the American exchange. The BITSO system usually is slow in transferring, so I decided to use the exchange, it would be a little more expensive, but I wanted to take the Bitcoin ascending advantage.

In Mexico we usually pay a premium price for either coin. Since they recently installed (maybe a month ago or maybe two ) the pair ETH-BTC without going Fiat I decide to use it, (it was going to be cheaper). I decide to trade in limited price my ETH, so the order was at a limited price of 0.07700001 ETH/BTC. It took some minutes and I received per 39.95 ETH, the amount of 3.058 BTC in about 3 minutes.

BTC was going up, and would be too much time to go to the limited price option, so I decide to go at a market price, and using the rest of the 397.12 ETH. I knew it was going to be cheaper, as in some times I buy BTC in a hurry use to be less. Since they have those bots that once you put a good price those programs put cheaper or expensive prices depending what you are doing. I decided to take the risk, the screen told me you are going to receive approximately “this” (about 30). Then, only 11.84 BTC in the account.

He later wrote to tell the author:

Yes, but there was 453 ETH, and I got only 14.95 BTC. Once you put an order in BITSO, it can take the whole day. Those bots generate many small orders that is not posible that is a user, because the trade fee is too high for those transactions being profitable.

He provided some screenshots:

He also provided a video of the Bitso bots in action:

CCN.com reached out to Bitso. They asked for either the author’s user account information, or the complainant’s. The author did not want to compromise the source, so he did not give his information to the exchange.

This is exactly what they said:

Please provide to us your Bitso’s User ID or registered email so we can check. Best.

It should be noted that this is more than was said to the victim in this “flash boil” that happened, wherein the Bitcoin price for Ether skyrocketed on our subscriber.

It would seem they are aware of what happened, but since we went through the “press inquiry” wing of their contact form, we got a response sooner, and the response at best is asking for his username, as in the request we very clearly state that we are reporting on someone who lost a fair bit of money in an exchange on their platform.

At this point all we can say is we caution against trusting Bitso’s automated system if you are trading on their platform at all, and possibly getting off their exchange and onto another that accepts Mexican banks is a good move.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

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P. H. Madore

P. H. Madore has written for CCN since 2014. Please send breaking news tips or requests for an investigation to [email protected]. He lives in Maine, USA. A single father of four young children, he does not discourage financial donations, provided they do not come with strings attached.
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