I told you on my last episode, I lost my bitcoins back in March 2017. After 20 months of no movement on the case, many emotions like frustration, despair, regret, and peace, I finally got them back. Let me tell you about it.

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Bye Bye Bitcoins

I lost the bitcoins. They'd locked the account, they'd deleted my support request. It looked like there was no hope. I started posting on the Bleutrade thread on Bitcointalk forum, but it seemed that the staff hadn't accessed it since they started the thread. I told my story on there, saying I hadn't got my bitcoins back after a week. One fellow named 1369 he questioned my credibility, considering I didn't have a posting history on Bitcointalk.

I overcame his initial skepticism and he said he would try to help. He'd had a really good experience with Bleutrade, so good that he had some connections with the staff. He said he figured somehow my case had just slipped through the cracks, and he'd try to get them to do something about it. So I'm grateful to 1369 that he tried.

But still, nothing, no response, no emails, no concern from the staff about the bad reputation that their exchange was developing.

Changing winds

With no apparent recourse, I gave up on it. As traders might say, I reached capitulation. I thought there was no chance of getting anything out of these guys. If they wanted to keep my money, they would.

That changed a couple of weeks ago when I went back on the Bitcointalk forum and 1369 was saying that Bleutrade had opened a Telegram group, and now would be the end of the bad talk against the exchange - people could now obtain answers to their basic support questions quite quickly.

It so happened that in September 2018, Bleutrade became regulated by the Maltese state, which might have forced it to be a little stricter with certain practices. It also meant that I probably had some recourse if I didn't get my money, as Bleutrade probably wouldn't want to risk its licence.

A new hope...ish

I went to Bleutrade's new site and was surprised to find that I could log in. I could see the old transactions there, two deposits and a withdrawal, which had been cancelled, but the funds had never been returned to the account. I made a note of them, and put in a support request. The next day I noticed that I had again been locked out of the account. Great.

I went on the Telegram group and asked a couple of times what was going on. The first two times I received no response. When I tagged the admins in a post, the guy said that the support team would get to it, and said that I already knew what was going on. I was a little confused, how would I know what was going on? He said it was being handled internally. I said "It sounds like you're saying Bleutrade has taken my money." He said don't be silly, Bleutrade has never taken anyone's money, and then accused me of slander, and attempting to sow discord.

I just imagine this situation. My friend calls me on the weekend and asks "Hey bro what are you up to tonight - you want to go to the bar and hoist a few?"

Naturally I would respond: "Nah mate I'm pretty busy, I've got this great new hobby, I like to sow discord in random crypto Telegram groups." Seriously?

I considered pointing out to the admin that my statement was just an opinion, and therefore not slanderous, and his statement accusing me of slander, was actually slanderous. I thought better of it. I thought, this guy is going to keep prodding me until I explode in the chat so it looks like I'm the bad guy, and then they can block me, and likely again avoid returning my funds.

Fortunately I PM'd another admin, he said I'd receive a response that day. I said thanks.

Two criminal masterminds

To my surprise, I did get a response that day. The weird and incredible irony was that, all this time I thought they were thieves for taking my bitcoins - but they stated reason they took them was that, they believed I had stolen the bitcoins. I'd deposited They said when they didn't get any support request from me, they decided it was proof that the source of my funds was indeed illegitimate.

Of course, I did put in a support request. I went through my old records and found the text, date and link. But besides that, when you lock a dude out of his account, wouldn't you think to like, contact him?

At the time, it looked like one big scam, but according to them, they were merely following prudent anti-money laundering procedures.

The real story...?

My best guess of what actually happened is that in 2017, a rogue staff member decided to pilfer my funds and cover his tracks by deleting the support request and confirming a red flag on the transactions to mark it as illegitimate. The exchange continued and eventually gained the Maltese licence, which put them under greater scrutiny, so when I had the chance to protest, they decided to colour in this little story of funds marked stolen.

In their version of the story, they never contacted me to ask what was going on, and just assumed their own customer to be a criminal. I'm not entirely sure which is worse.

A happy ending

The happy ending is, they asked me to confirm my identity and explain the source of the funds. I did so, and they said okay we will unlock your account and the funds. They did it, and I got my bitcoins. How about that! So despite all my criticisms of Bleutrade, I'm grateful for what they did. They could have drawn out the process and made it difficult, but they gave me back my bitcoins, and even despite the recent downturn in the market, they're still worth a lot more than when I lost them.

So there are some important lessons to be learned here:

• Never give up. You don't have to hold on to your bitterness or your disillusionment, but you don't have to give up.
• Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice.
• Never use Bleutrade.

Thank you

Thank for reading, listening and watching. Thanks for sharing the video with your friends so they can soak up the crypto-goodness.

Thanks for liking Cryptonomics on Facebook, subscribing to Cryptonomics on YouTube and Cryptonomics on Anchor. And thanks for being cool!

Stay grateful.

The Episode

You can listen to the episode on Anchor and other podcasting services here: Cryptonomics - How I Got My Bitcoins Back. Or watch on YouTube below:

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