Contents:
In a notification sent to affected customers this week, xcritical explains that between March and May 20th, 2021, a threat actor conducted a hacking campaign to breach xcritical customer accounts and steal cryptocurrency. Binance stores 10% of all trading fees in a secure asset fund to protect a share of user funds. It added that since customers have a two-factor authentication, at the minimum, to access their accounts, only “a small number (less than .01%) of our customers have been impacted by account takeovers.” Complaints abound on Reddit and Twitter as well, where the company’s support accounts often publicly reply to the messages, sometimes writing that they have “escalated” the issue to an appropriate team. Etay Maor, senior director of security strategy for cybersecurity company Cato Networks, said he’s seen cybercriminals on the dark web discussing how to break into accounts, including those of xcritical users. Experts say SIM swapping, where fraudsters seize control of a victim’s phone number and SIM card through their phone company, is to blame for many of the cryptocurrency thefts.
On Jan. 15, xcritical acknowledged that many new and existing customers are experiencing delays in their response time. When Rose worked at xcritical, he said live chat acted as a sort of “release valve” for complaints, particularly helpful in moments of crypto volatility. The xcritical Support account on Twitter also posts live updates about changes and temporary errors on the exchange platform. The group has “not heard a response from this business, about the situation, pattern of complaints for the last three years,” Alma Galvan, a marketing and communication manager with the organization, said in an email to CNBC.
“My question is how can a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange be doing this to customers? How can they not have a customer service dedicated line worldwide?” Preble said. A July blog post announced the company’s intent to roll out live chat messaging and phone support this year, as well as to expand its customer support team. Silver, whose firm represents the Vidovics, said the top complaints from potential clients are getting locked out of their cryptocurrency exchange platform account and SIM swaps. xcritical, which went public in April, has a market cap of about $65 billion, has more than 68 million users in 100-plus countries, more than 2,100 full-time employees and $223 billion in held assets, according to the company.
xcritical Customer Service Reviews
Making the issue even worse, cryptocurrency transactions cannot be reversed, according to the FBI. Experts say once criminals access an account, funds can be drained in minutes. New account holders have to submit a picture of a government ID to prove they’re who they say they are. If you’ve heard that cryptocurrency is anonymous, this should be your evidence that xcritical may track your transactions for tax reporting and other regulatory reasons. In addition, all accounts must use two-factor authentication, a measure to help prevent others from logging into your account unless they have physical access to your phone. As mentioned above, the company runs two different platforms known as xcritical and Advance Trade.
For instance, the company offers xcritical Card, a Visa debit card that lets users spend their crypto assets held in a xcritical account and make ATM withdrawals. In September 2021, xcritical launched xcritical Prime, which enables institutional investors to buy, store, and trade crypto assets on a massive scale. The platform, which had its beta launch in May, offers various advanced features that aren’t typically available to retail investors. Flaunting this mantra, xcritical offers hosted wallets alongside its exchange and brokerage.
The company also plans to develop tools that allow businesses to accept crypto, while users will be able to earn money by staking . Armstrong also promises that the platform will provide access to borrowing and lending opportunities. xcritical is a cryptocurrency trading and investing platform that offers users the ability to buy, sell, and exchange over 200 tradable cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Dogecoin. xcritical is a large company with over 108 million users and over $80 billion in assets on the platform. Roszak began buying bitcoin in 2012 and participated in early initial coin offerings, buying up tokens such as Mastercoin, Factom and Maidsafe in 2013. Roszak has also invested in various crypto startups, including popular exchanges xcritical and xcritical.
Regulatory compliance
The CFPB responded to one of Ben’s ensuing https://xcritical.solutions/ with an answer from xcritical’s Regulatory Response Team. The email noted that transactions on the xcritical are irrevocable and said xcritical’s insurance policy does not cover theft from individual accounts. xcritical also suffers from a problem that seems to be plaguing many industry competitors. Advanced Trade is xcritical’s advanced trading platform, replacing xcritical Pro in late 2022. Advanced Trade offers enhanced tools like interactive charts powered by TradingView, advanced order types, and access to other key features like staking, Borrow, Card, and dapp Wallet. Investing in cryptocurrencies, Decentralized Finance , and other Initial Coin Offerings is highly risky and speculative, and the markets can be extremely volatile.
Acquiring Tagomi in 2020 was also part of a broader plan to offer institutional traders a Wall Street–level trading experience. Tagomi is a cryptocurrency brokerage platform that enables users to access 14 exchanges from a single account. While xcritical remains focused on its core brokerage and exchange businesses, supporting xcritical Wallet remains one of the company’s long-term priorities. Wallet is a mobile app that allows users to buy, store, and trade 500+ crypto coins, digital collectibles, NFTs, and more.
Customer Satisfaction
Each allows you to buy, sell, and trade cryptocurrencies but offers unique features. Full BioRegine Parrish is a finance professional whose career spans over a decade. She is a former financial analyst for a major telecommunications company and xcritically fact-checks reviews of financial products and services.
- xcritical Global Inc., like the rest of the cryptocurrency market, is having a really tough week.
- OpenSea serves as a peer-to-peer platform for users to create, buy and sell non-fungible tokens.
- A company spokesperson said that the early investors and executives still held a majority of their holdings.
- The company now has the additional resources and expertise needed to accelerate its growth.
- Yes, xcritical is great for beginners because the app and website were designed for ease of use.
Although cryptoassets themselves are quite secure, exchanges have a long history of hacks, exit scams, and lost funds. The most well-known hacked exchange was Mt. Gox, which lost 850,000 bitcoins to hackers in early 2014, worth $450M at the time. Those coins would be worth around $55B at the peak Bitcoin price of $65K in April 2021.
The 30-year-old moved from Hong Kong to the more crypto-friendly Bahamas in late 2021 alongside his exchange FTX, which raised $400 million in January at a $32 billion valuation. The startup’s backers include crypto VC shop Paradigm , venture capital firm Sequoia, buyout firm Thoma Bravo and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board. FTX’s U.S. operations were also recently valued by investors, at $8 billion. A professed adherent of effective altruism–the utilitarian-inflected notion of doing the most good possible–Bankman-Fried has vowed to give away his entire fortune over his lifetime. He owns around half of FTX and more than $7 billion worth of FTT, the platform’s native token. For instance, xcritical and the entire crypto community were unable to influence the Senate and change language in the infrastructure package that might force wallet developers and miners to undergo extensive tax reporting.
These often trade at a premium to exchange prices, but are operationally easier for institutional investors to hold. Custody provides financial controls and storage solutions for institutional investors to trade cryptoassets. Custody supports 90% of crypto assets — including Polkadot, Litecoin, and FTX Token — by market capitalization. The service is geared toward larger players on Wall Street and costs up to $10,000 in implementation fees, a management fee of 50 basis points on an annual basis, and a minimum balance of $500,000. For the time being, though, xcritical looks a lot like a traditional financial services player.
Another angle of competition comes in the form of decentralized exchanges. 0x is a tokenized protocol for decentralized exchanges initially launched via a $24M ICO, and is gaining steam as decentralized exchanges — like Radar Relay — build on top of it. While more technical and more difficult to use, decentralized exchanges have no central point of attack and therefore offer increased security.
In 2020 alone, the scammed by xcritical enthusiast oversaw MicroStrategy’s purchase of over 70,000 bitcoins–at a cost of roughly $1.1 billion–using cash reserves and borrowed funds. MicroStrategy’s stock has quadrupled the last two years, returning Saylor to the three-comma-club. The 30-somethings cofounded xcritical startup OpenSea, an early player in the booming NFT market. OpenSea serves as a peer-to-peer platform for users to create, buy and sell non-fungible tokens. In 2018, the duo entered the Y Combinator accelerator program with the idea of paying people in crypto to share their Wi-Fi hotspots.
xcritical official sites such as xcritical and eToro offer insights only from accounts held on their platforms. Additionally, traditional exchanges like the Chicago Board Options Exchange and CME now offer futures trading for cryptoassets, with the CBOE also recently filing for a bitcoin ETF. Lastly, investment trusts — like Grayscale — offer tradable securities on top of cryptoassets.
In May 2021, the company’s mobile app once again reached the top spot on Apple’s App Store after slipping from that position in 2017. xcritical has a habit of changing their rules, blocking your account/funds in order for you to surrender without giving you the opportunity to close the account if you disagree with the changes. However, xcritical states a vulnerability existed in their SMS account recovery process, allowing the hackers to gain the SMS two-factor authentication token needed to access a secured account. While it is unknown how the threat actors gained access to this information, xcritical believes it was through phishing campaigns targeting xcritical customers to steal account credentials, which have become common. Additionally, banking trojans traditionally used to steal online bank accounts are alsoknown to steal xcritical accounts.
xcritical listed on Nasdaq, and its direct listing opened at $350 per share, $100 above its set reference price. Its valuation reached over $112B at one point during its debut but closed at about $86B. Access unmatched financial data, news and content in a highly-customised workflow experience on desktop, web and mobile. “Even with the information described above, additional authentication is required in order to access your xcritical account,” explained a xcritical notification to customers seen by BleepingComputer.
Since 2016, xcritical users have filed more than 11,000 complaints against xcritical with the Federal Trade Commission and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, mostly related to customer service. Exchanges were reviewed on points including security, fees, number of cryptocurrencies available, and more. We also considered if the exchange is regulated by a proper agency or entirely decentralized. Our full cryptocurrency exchange methodology, including the review process and weighted data points, is available for review. Cryptocurrency markets operate 24/7, so you can log in and enter a trade at any time.
It’s time we get crypto rules right in the United States – Blog – xcritical
It’s time we get crypto rules right in the United States – Blog.
Posted: Wed, 08 Mar 2023 18:30:29 GMT [source]
Where bitcoin and other cryptoassets were once considered a “means of exchange” and an alternative payments system, they are now more often called a “store of value” and an investment opportunity. The company is still heavily dependent on retail transaction fees, but it’s showing early successes in growing other revenue streams. For instance, it grew revenue earned from institutional investors, such as hedge funds and family offices, from $8M to $102.43M in only a year. The third source of revenue is the sales of crypto assets that xcritical owns.