It seems like every cryptocurrency exchange is under scrutiny of some sort. Many of the articles and blog posts I have read, as well as the people I have witnessed complaining, have led me to post this.
It seems like most of the complaints are just not valid. Let's review a few facts first.
1- The amount of crypto traders has grown exponentially from January to October of 2017, but at a steady pace.
2-Many of the trusted exchanges handled that growth the best that they could.
3- The number of new crypto trader grew faster than exchanges could verify those users during the last two month of 2017. (most exchanges stopped accepting new users, or at least required a referral link to obtain trading access)
4- Bitcoin has a VERY LIMITED block size.
5-No exchange can expedite your Bitcoin (or other crypto) verification within the block (unless you are paying for an acceleration service, not offered by any of the exchanges that I personally trust and use).
Now we take this information and add that at least half of the new traders started using exchanges without knowledge of it's terms of services. Possibly they do not even know how to transfer coins to the exchange before they initiate their first transaction. This creates a huge set of problems:
-help ticket numbers go up instantly beyond the capacity of the staff that each exchange has.
-often times this will tie up the support team with a lot of things they shouldn't need to spend/waste time on. (coins sent to wrong wallet, like sending BTC to a LTC address) Some exchanges have had to resolve to including in ToS that this mistake will not be reversible. I have seen people say they accidentally purchased something at 10 times the market value, or sold 10 times below... silly mistakes, in my opinion.
I see many new users buys tiny pieces of Bitcoin and wondering why it takes so long to get it to an exchange.
So now there do exist Real issues on exchanges that need immediate attention that are standing in line behind the people who have submitted 450 tickets in 20 minutes because they haven't yet heard back from support on their question as to why their bitcoin deposit hasn't been verified yet. When it has been 2,4, or who care how long if you transferred BTC!!!
Be Patient Folks!
Educate yourself about everything before using it. Exchanges are many, I trust a few that have been around for awhile. A lot of the newer ones have red flags all over them, yet the masses are flocking to them. Wallets are the same. Only use a trusted and tested method for securing and trading assets. Otherwise you might find yourself ranting about something that is as arbitrary as pissing into the wind and getting angry at the wind because you peed on yourself.
For the record:
I trade on HiitBtc and Binance regularly and trust both implicitly. Multiple successful withdrawals on both.
I am testing out Cryptopia one successful withdrawal, not sure about the security within the exchange just yet.
I have been using Freewallet for a mobile wallet, but I only keep spending money on this (what I am willing to lose) Anything connected to the internet constantly is not 100% secure for storage.
I am waiting on my Trezor hardwallet to arrive.
I like the Ledger wallet, but they are new and yet to be time tested.
So enjoy your trading experience! If you have done your research and know the platform you are on, just be patient with the support teams as they struggle to deal with the massive insanity that is going on in the crypto-sphere today!