I find myself here after a rather unfortunate mistake leaving me with no other options but to reach out to the HIVE / Splinter lands community seeking your consideration to help recover/ recoup funds I recently lost. Any and all contributions, donations, or otherwise are deeply appreciated. As a normally humble, middle-aged, working class male I find it extremely difficult to come to the point of seeking out community charity of sorts, but this is where the path of options has led today.....
I would like to preface this post by offering thanks to the support staff and affiliates I've engaged with from Hive Engine. From the first Email reply on my support ticket to the direct conversation with the chief at the HIVE key chain, I was treated with dignity and genuine empathy. All of my questions were answered with remarkable urgency and great patience while offering detailed explanation of how all the different gears turn to move the machine. Knowledge is power, and this environment it jam-packed with amazing people that set this network apart from the rest!!
---The exact TLDR details are laid out in the story, below. Please note, this has been a very long, anxious event for me, that is still eating at the entire spectrum of my core emotions.
Intentions are to keep is short and sweet, but it's difficult to 'omit the grit' sometimes.
Now then....
This story began on 10/18/ 2021, when I had decided to pull the lion's share of my DEC from the game to sell and purchase more SPS to stake. The plan was aimed to increase the number of vouchers I would be able to receive during the presale event. Looking over the day's SPS market prices on various exchanges, I found the external exchange Coinex had the best price for a substantial SPS buy, and they also list HIVE. I decided the plan was to swap my DEC for HIVE, then send the HIVE to Coinex to sell the HIVE and buy my SPS.
Putting plan in motion, I took out 65,000 DEC and headed over to Swap. Once there I couldn't find HIVE tokens. Moving over to the HIVE market, I again found no HIVE... All I could find was SWAP.HIVE tokens for trade. After doing a little reading I found that HIVE platforms will trade out the SWAP.HIVE and send out regular HIVE when doing 'withdraw' transactions. This function is in place to ensure that HIVE tokens arrive at the deposit address instead of sending the SWAP.HIVE for the off-chain transactions. Feeling at ease, I exchanged 65,000 DEC for 1131 SWAP.HIVE on Swap. After having a very delayed transaction, I found in discord there was some residual slowness from an event the previous day that saw Swap, among other apps heavily disrupted. Validator issues if memory serves me correctly.
I made another pass through the list of swaps and exchanges that list SPS to bargain shop and Coinex was still looking like the go-to. Being that I was already on the Coinex website I decided to pull up the HIVE key chain browser extension, so I could easily complete the transaction in the same window and confirm the details side by side. Making a mistake here would cost me dearly... Just under $1000 USD at the time, and I couldn't afford to take chances with the majority of my investment funds.
After about an hour passed with no posting in the deposit address, I verified the transaction through a couple of the available block explorers and confirmed things looked to indicate the deposit made it as far as @coinexdeposit address. I quadruple checked the memo and confirmed it was a match as well. I created a support ticket with HIVE engine to confirm that the transaction looked clear from their view as well, hoping that maybe the spotty slowness may be the cause of the issue. After a few more hours I received word from HIVE Engine support team to confirm the transaction and affording me a quick back and forth Email exchange, it is found that my tokens were delivered as SWAP.HIVE, and they are indeed showing to be sitting in the @coinexdeposit wallet with about 8 other transactions of SWAP.HIVE spanning 3 months prior, to current. Through almost immediate replies I am advised that the SWAP.HIVE is normally burned in the transaction and regular HIVE token is sent out instead.
Finding this to be the case, HIVE Engine support submitted a request to have the @coinextdeposit site blacklisted to ensure none of their applications would allow sending out of SWAP.HIVE to the exchange's HIVE wallet. I was told if any of the other senders had opened a ticket or made a report, my transaction would have been blocked and not allowed through. Since nothing had been reported, the HIVE team had no knowledge of the exchange's HIVE wallet.
It was then suggested I contact Coinex and advise them of the situation, adding that if Coinex support could access their HIVE wallet a simple return transaction could resolve this issue.
--This is where things go from me being hopeful to finding out how terribly miserable a 'support' department can actually make a person.
I created my Coinex ticket, Email #1 - explaining the situation, the issue, and how they could quickly resolve my issue. After nearly 3 days of waiting for a reply, it finally came! Coinex was telling me it would take 1wk-2wks to manually complete my deposit. After 1wk I replied asking for them to simply return the deposit to sender address and I got no replies for almost another week after finally deciding it was time to ramp up my efforts press resolution.
After a few more Emails, Coinex decided support is not able to do anything because the "fake deposit" was not the HIVE tokens they support, pointing me back to 'sender network' to help get my tokens back. Now they are basically telling me to shove off, and my ticket was closed. Over the course of almost 4 weeks now, there have been a total of 53 Emails in my attempt to get what should have been a very simple return on a transaction that shouldn't have been able to be sent off to begin with. Coinex refuses to reply at this point and last maintained that HIVE Engine would have to be the ones to return my deposit to their coinex wallet on HIVE network....
*I'm not suggesting knowing what's best for you and your trading/ investment practices, but I am confident I know one of the WORST ways to go about it.
Reaching out and working with the HIVE key chain team, they're looking into adding a disclaimer notice for any transaction with SWAP.HIVE being sent. There is no way to overstate how amazing it is to be able to engage directly with developers and support staff willing to not only discuss issues, but also spend their time providing information and explaining the complexities of blockchain operability on and off chain. When a creator is willing to discuss their product functions and accept critical feedback directly, it really goes a long way to put some faith back into the human condition...
If you've made it this far, I applaud your commitment and equally thank you for taking the time to hear my situation. Whether there is intent to contribute or not, I appreciate the opportunity to share my story as both a tale of caution and bit of knowledge on what NOT to do with most of your investment funds....
Please consider something as simple as adding a vote, if nothing else. The community surrounding Splinterlands on HIVE is the best in blockchain and one of the biggest reasons I've enjoyed the experience of blockchain gaming.
We'll add a disclaimer on Keychain when sending out SWAP.HIVE
Thank you for your taking the time to hear me out and working with me on this situation! I also absolutely appreciate this!
Sorry about your loss, this is quite similar to what belemo faced.
It seems something needs to be fixed asap.
Not quite, Belemo was outright stolen of his funds. This exchange is just a bunch of assholes.
There is no recourse to the terrible support structure either. I did manage to find complaint report type ticket form, but they just pasted my complaint into the existing ticket and closed that case :/ They have no issue playing the blame and shame card while dodging options to assist.
That sucks man! Tough lesson to learn but one I’m sure you won’t have again in the future! Test transactions are our friends :D
Yes indeed! Won't get me twice, that is a fact.
I wonder who certifies the exchanges.
News like this discourage people from embracing blockchain.
Their Telegram group is full of people complaining and asking for support help. It's insane how little care and effort they put into helping people who chose to put some trust into the brand / company.
Good question, not sure. It certainly doesn’t help us but I think it puts bad marks on these random exchanges. I don’t know if I put faith in ones I don’t know or hear much of. I’ve never heard of CoinEx.
Coinex has been around for a long while.
I prefer trading with the major exchanges too. Although these growing exchanges offer more upcoming tokens before listing on major exchanges.
I attempted to explain many times to Coinex that the tokens are sitting in their HIVE wallet and just need someone from their side to log in and send them back. There is just a wall of apathy there and I will take every chance I get to recommend against anyone asking for opinions on them. The HIVE keychain has agreed to add a notice/disclaimer for the SWAP.HIVE sends, which I believe will serve as a deterrent for future occurrences. Thank you for reading my story and sharing it as well! I appreciate your time and interaction, it is great to see the positive community support! Hopefully belemo was able to find a path to resolution.
Sorry for your loss. I do hope you get you deserved hive back soon
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Thank you for taking the time to read my story and share a slice!
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Sorry for your headache and loss here! It’s a real pain but one that I unfortunately think will happen quite a bit with the popularity of hive. I know it’s hindsight and hopefully something you’ll do now going forward but it’s always best to send a test transaction only worth 1$ or so. I’ve lost some funds myself but it was in the losing of funds that you learn things like this.
Hopefully you can get back to a good place with the funds in the near future!
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I hear it, unfortunately, I have faced issues with support teams several times and I wonder, why there is no easy way to sue them. All the regulations help very little to the end user. It is so frustrating to see the ticket getting closed without taking the account-ship that would make the customer happy. Little do they care.
That is the unfortunate truth.. Some how cryptocurrency doesn't have the same treatment as other financial matters and I feel part of it is the lack of regulations to enforce accountability on the business end. Like you say, no real consumer protections... One day this will change, and until then as consumers it is important to identify the places you are better served. Live and learn I suppose.
Thank you for taking the time to exchange some thoughts on this!
Sorry for your loss.
Thank you for taking the time to read my story and reply!!
Great post. Thanks for the warning and laying out the issue so clearly. Will never use Coinex again.
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This is one of fears about the exchanges. The shock that ces with people loosing their hard-earned money to some unseen virtual interruption. Sorry for you lose.
Part that is worse, they could send it back because it's just sitting there. They just won't do it. As they do not care to help anyone. Thank you for reading my story and sharing your thoughts on the matter!
It is always painful but nothing last forever @coinexdeposit
Absolutely true! The lesson will stick with me, however... Thank you for sharing your words and this story!