I suspect many of you will ridicule me for writing in support of a crypto exchange that's had soooo much bad luck. Many people would probably tell me that it's not "bad luck" at all, but actually bad management or even criminal behaviour that has followed this exchange like a bad smell. You may well be correct and I apologise for singing the praises if they're truly undeserved. I've always been open about my lack of knowledge when it comes to tech-talk so try to understand that I write this post from my-own personal experience being a member of Cryptopia and not from the perspective of someone more educated than myself.

Cryptopia is a New Zealand based exchange and I found my way onto their site after I became frustrated with Coinbase and other exchanges who were asking for ridiculous measures before allowing me to trade and/or withdraw my funds. At the time of entry Cryptopia appeared on a top-ten exchange list and this reassured me enough to apply for an account. I was pleased at how easy it was to register and never did I have to pose with my driving licence or passport in order to gain an account.

After registering without fuss I was instantly allowed to go through the self-education process, teaching myself how to trade and set up buy/sell orders etc etc. This learning curve was accelerated by the wonderful human-beings who make the effort to post tutorial video on-line and I doth my cap to them all.

I have to state that the time when I stepped into the crypto-world was smack bang in the middle of happy-hour. Everyone was inebriated already and the atmosphere was as wild as an 18-to-30's holiday in Ibiza! Every order I made came back double and it seemed impossible to place a bad bet. But this was the time when Bitcoin was climbing like King-Kong with a rocket up his arse and we all know how that turned out...

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Cryptopia was riding high and their website became so popular that they had to employ more and more Devs to handle the unexpected workload. At one point they even had to close their LTC and Dodge markets, only leaving open the BTC market for users to trade on. This was a bit of an inconvenience and caused plenty of upset within the community. Eventually, the Devs did their work and Cryptopia stood by their word and reopened the markets. Those who were astute enough to know how to react made a shit-ton of money out of this situation, as many coins from the LTC market got switched to the BTC market, sky-rocketing their value. I myself just sat there, like a rabbit in the headlights. My reactions were too slow and I failed to capitalise before massive sell walls arose. Never mind, I thought, you just have to learn from things like this.

Along came the Bears...

Fortunately, I cashed out more than enough while the going was good. It certainly wasn't the full amount and as the bar shouted "Last orders" I, like many others, lost a ton while clinging to foolish optimism. At the time when the hangover kicked in and we all watched, dumbstruck, as coins burned their wealth faster than the Hindenburg, I still had a sizeable amount left in my exchange accounts...Just enough to keep me in the game.
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I was no longer trading in 20 different coins but instead I'd learned to concentrate on the trading patterns of just a few "reliables". I won't say which coins I chose to trade with for fear of you laughing at my choices, but regardless I still had a plan and to some extent it was working. I will, however, tell you of one particular alt-coin as this is where I had my first experience with "The curse of Cryptopia"...

Goldmember

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One of my reliable coins that managed to stay active during the bear market was an alt-coin named AurumCoin(AU). This coin reportedly had a solid set-up and was backed with, of course, gold... What could possibly go wrong?

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So for months I was happily trading on AU's highs and lows, steadily building my pot. Then, out of nowhere, came "The Curse" and I woke up to find out that my "reliable" alt-coin had just done a King Kong sized dump that had no chance of flushing. Soon after this happened the wallet was placed into "maintenance", which is never a good thing. I'd read many complaints in the past from members of cryptopia who were super-pissed about not being able to access their coins due to the closure of a wallet. It had happened to me before but every time it did the wallet came back on-line and all seemed above board, so my wallet going into "maintenance" wasn't as alarming as it should have been.

At first there seemed to be no explanation for the dump, but after a day or so the reports began to come in and they weren't comfortable reading at all...

"Cryptopia is a scam"...

"Cryptopia, give me my fucking money back or I'm taking you to court!"...

"Cryptopia, answer my message or go fuck yourself"...

.... And these were some of the nicer comments coming from twitter.

But on top of all these comments there stood an official looking thread made by AurumCoin themselves and this was the first time I had ever seen the phrase "51% Attack"...

To this day I still don't understand what a "51% attack" really is, other than it being something to do with having a majority control over the tech, in one way or another, which allows you to manipulate other peoples investments. Obviously, many folk got shafted and by all reports AU were claiming it was completely down to Cryptopia's lack of security. In the meantime, Cryptopia were claiming innocence and put out a very passive comment that blatantly ignored the accusations from AU and even suggested they were working together to sort things out...well that's not what camp-AU were saying, that's for sure...

AurumCoin(Paraphrased) "We are in no way working with Cryptopia to resolve this issue as we understand wholeheartedly that Cryptopia are to blame. We have lost half of our coins due to this attack and any statements made by Cryptropia saying the market will reopen is completely false. Go suck a dick Cryptopia, you've ruined my retirement plan..."

Back and forth it went, between the two camps, and in the meantime those lucky enough to have kept their AU coins(Myself included) were left with no way of trading them. The wallet was locked down and besides more and more disgruntled traders throwing in their annoyed opinions the situation seemed to be at a stalemate. At this point I had around £100 worth of Aurumcoin sat idle and I was very pleased when Cryptopia stepped up to announce that they would reopen the AU wallet to allow holders of the coin to withdraw on a first come first served basis. This reaction seemed a fair conclusion to the problem as AurumCoin wanted nothing to do with cryptopia and had burned their bridges anyway. Cryptopia could have just de-listed the coin and left us all with nothing, but instead they did the right thing and honoured their members by allowing them to trade AU on other exchanges. Over to AU...

So I waited for the date to come around and sat up until 2am for the cryptopia AU market to open, which it did so. But I had one big problem that I couldn't easily solve and that was no fault of Cryptopia. Au coin was only traded on one other exchange and after signing up I found out that their AU wallet was also in maintenance...what to do now?! I quickly gathered my senses and found myself what appeared to be an off-line wallet to store my un-tradable AU coins. All seemed to be going well and after the market reopened I removed my AU coins from cryptopia and sent them to my new wallet.

As of yet, my coins have not appeared in my wallet and from the messages I did receive from AU FaceBook group it seems the wallet is a little more complicated to set-up than I first thought. In-fact, it seems you need a PHD in space-science to even get near to setting this thing up. So after all the dummy-spitting, tutting and finger-wagging by camp-AU it seems they have done their customers no favours at all and left the situation in a "every man for themselves" kind of thing...Tut-Tut indeed.
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We live and learn, I guess. Now let's get back to trading!

So, I'm another £100 down, but to me that was no fault of Cryptopia's. I understand the dangers of leaving coins in exchanges like theirs and by what I could see they did their best to stand by their users. Subsequently, I was happy to keep trading on their exchange and did so without issue until "The Curse" decided to rear it fugly head once more...

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"WTF!! Not again?!"

And this time it was a bad one...really bad...

Again, I'm not going to pretend to understand the mechanics of what went on. What I do know is that Millions(And I mean blooming millions!) of crypto-currencies were fraudulently sold from different wallets on the Cryptopia exchange. It appears that some folk have lost their life savings here, so I'll try to be respectful as that's a hard pill for anyone to swallow. We all know that trading crypto is in its wild west era but I don't think anyone expects a situation like this. They certainly don't expect a double-dip attack either!! And that's just what happened here!

While Cryptopia brought in the authorities to investigate who had hacked their exchange, it got hacked again! Can you believe that?!!!! I would pay big-$$$ to have been a fly on the wall at that moment.... I mean how embarrassing must it have been for the company directors? Here they were trying to reassure anyone still loyal enough to stick around and they get their proverbial pants pulled down to their ankles again... No Vaseline for you Mr. Cryptopia. You're getting bummed prison style!

At this point even I started reading Cryptoia its last rights. This must be the time when a company orders it final meal before becoming a memory, right?...HaHa! Not for this rabid dog, it doesn't.

Today I decided to double-click my shortcut link to Cryptopia's website, fully expecting to see the usual "Website closed while we deal with the situation" message. But blow me like a £1000 hooker, the site is back in business!!!

NEWS - Cryptopia secures 35% coins in new wallets as it gears up for relaunch

It's like the famous Monty Python scene with the Black Knight who won't admit defeat...

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Watch this space...

How can you not respect a website that tries this hard in the face of adversity? An underdog that refuses to give up? Come on folks, you gotta hand it to whoever is running this company. It's like all the Rocky films combined!

I'll understand anyone who tells me I'm mad for trusting my funds with this exchange and I'm certainly not recommending anyone else apply for a wallet. But for me, I've just got to see how this story ends... Because if they are legit, then it's my belief that this company will do anything to keep its customers. These crazy Kiwi' will fight to the bitter end and just when you think they're down, they'll jump back up and knock their opponents spark-out!

So if I'm gonna put my money in someone else's hands, then its gonna be the person who's gonna hold onto it until their last breath.

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