LakeBTC.com Review 2021 – Scam or Not?
LakeBTC was founded in 2013 as a Bitcoin exchange for high-volume traders and financial professionals. Nowadays, LakeBTC stands for Lake Banking Technology Company. The company is based in Shanghai, China and it serves the Asian market primarily.
Review Contents
- Verification Process on LakeBTC
- Fees
- LakeBTC.com Trading Analysis
- Ease of Use
- Customer Support
- Security
- Supported Payment Methods
- Supported Countries
- Conclusion
Verification Process on LakeBTC
In order to trade digital currencies on LakeBTC users don’t have to verify their identity, but the verification is required for trading with fiat currencies.
The process involves all the usual steps and requires standard documents. In order to get verified on LakeBTC user needs to submit the following:
- Full name and address. Withdrawals can be made only under the full name used in the account, so that’s one of the important details to know.
- Photos of government-issued document (ID, passport, driver’s license). The document needs to be photographed from both sides.
- Mobile phone number
- Proof of residency, which must not be older than three months. In case that proof of residency is not available, the exchange accepts other government issued ID photos.
- A selfie photo with the documents is required if the user plans to trade high volumes or is a resident of certain countries.
There are no trading limits for unverified accounts.
The exchange accepts many different FIAT currencies, including but not limited to – USD, CNY, SEK, EUR, HKD, JPY, GBP, AUD, CAD, SGD, CHF, KRW, ZAR, ARS, BRL, MXN, INR, NZD, IDR, THB, MYR, TRY, RON, VEF, NGN, KES, XAF, XOF.
There’s one rule when it comes to deposits and withdrawals in FIAT currencies – if the account is registered in one FIAT currency, deposits and withdrawals are possible in only that currency. Of course, trading is possible in all available currencies.
The trading platform currently offers only Bitcoin and FIAT pairs. No other cryptocurrencies are available for trading.
Fees
When it comes to deposit fees, all of these are free of charge:
- BTC
- Ripple
- System Banker
For other LakeBankers the fee varies, and it’s shown for the user review before submitting a deposit request. The exchange supports wire transfers, but they are slow (it takes approximately 5 business days for a transfer) and expensive (usually the transfer costs between 15 USD and 65 USD). Besides that, the company’s location (Shanghai, China) carries additional fees for Internacional traders. Great way to deposit money to the exchange is by Ripple network, which offers high speed and low fees.
Withdrawals, on the other hand, have specified costs:
System Banker
- For volume below 6000 BTC, it’s 0.3 percent + 5 USD.
- For volume between 6000 and 15,000 BTC, it’s 0.2 percent + 5 USD
- For volume above 15,000 BTC, it’s 0.1 percent + 5 USD
Third-pary fees not included.
Withdrawal fees with other LakeBankers vary. The actual fee is submitted for review by the user before placing a withdrawal request.
Withdrawals in Bitcoins are free.
Trading fees
Trading fees are 0.2 percent for the taker and between 0.15 and 0 percent for the maker. As the volume increases, the fees drop meaning that there’s no fee for high monthly volumes (over 20,000 BTC), while those who trade below 500 BTC on a monthly level are charged 0.15 percent fee.
OTC buying is free, but selling costs 1 percent of the amount.
LakeBTC.com Trading Analysis
LakeBTC doesn’t have very high volume, and it only offers Bitcoin trading. It doesn’t support many advanced order types, limiting the users to:
- Limit order
Used primarily to protect inexperienced users from loosing their money.
- Darkpool
Used in case of large trades to make the order invisible and lessen the impact on the market. Darkpool carries a higher fee.
- Maker only
Used in the case when the user wants to pay only the maker fees, automatically canceling the orders if it’s a taker.
The exchange currently doesn’t support margin and short trading, but it plans to introduce these features. No futures or derivates are supported either.
Ease of Use
The platform looks good, with a minimalistic design. The exchange offers two different interfaces for trading Bitcoin – the standard trading interface and the “LakeTrader” interface which allow advanced users to access to various trading options easily.
The website is a bit slower than other platforms, but it’s rather responsive. When it comes to mobile support – the entire platform was developed in html5, and it’s completely user-friendly on mobile. There are no apps until now, but the website works great on all mobile devices.
Support
The support on LakeBTC is pretty decent. There’s phone support for Mandarin speaking users, while International users will have to contact the support by email. Their FAQ page is rather extensive and provides vital information for the users. The support team is very responsive and professional.
User experience
There are some complaints related to the locking users out of their accounts, and the company’s location (China) raises suspicion, but overall this is a reliable exchange.
Security
The platform offers two-factor authentication, SMS confirmations and it holds the majority of the funds in cold storage.
There are no hacking reports, but the LakeBTC did lose a lot of money when EgoPay was compromised in a hacking attack.
There are email notifications, and email encryption is used as well, making the security tight. Very reliable and safe trading platform.
Supported Payment Methods
- Wire Transfer
Supported Countries
User from all countries except USA are welcome.
LakeBTC Review Conclusion
LakeBTC.com is a growing market and it surely does offer many great features.
Pros
- Competitive fees
- Good security
- Accepts many different FIAT currencies
Cons
- Website could use some improvements
- Doesn’t keep the pace with competition
LakeBTC could be more than decent exchange if they step their game up and offer more trading options. At the moment, it’s just a trustworthy place for trading smaller amounts of BTC for your native FIAT currency.
Do you have good or bad experiences with this Bitcoin Exchange? Please share them!
Go to LakeBTC.com
I think this exchange is shutting down. 😭😭
Is this a safe way to buy coins
This platform is a Scam – Run away if you don’t want to loose your money !!
I used LakeBTC because of “Conigy” in order to do arbitrage.
I transferred my bitcoins to sell but when I wanted to withdraw… IMPOSSIBLE, no response to my emails.
So I did the opposite, reselling my Euros for bitcoins, I loose some money. Then I asked a withdraw and the transaction has been blocked at 40% for more than 12 hours,
I don’t know if I will get my 1500€ back !! So I try to warn as many people as possible, don’t be fooled !!
This website is a scam. I am not able to withdraw my funds (btc). There is no one to talk to so basicly not sure if I even have my btc or not. But stay away from this exchange. If you go to their Twitter page no updates since 2017 as well as their facebook page.
How to contact LakeBtc ?
No phone/sms, no address.
I sent few emails, but without any answer
Worst exchange I’ve ever seen. Impossible to withdraw funds, especially FIAT funds. These things should be illegal! Beware of this one!
I’ve been trying to get my funds out of there since the first week of April. As of today, I’ve still not gotten it out. It was suggested to me by customer support that it would be faster to withdraw coins instead of cash so I bought some overly inflated priced BTC with the funds I had and tried sending them to my wallet.
So far my BTC is still stuck in their system. I wanted to originally used the funds to buy BTC when it was low, but because I couldn’t get access to my money, I had to buy BTC at the higher price AFTER the spike we had a couple of weeks ago. I lost money because of it plus the fees In paid I lost 26% of my ordinal funds and I still can’t get ithe balance out. I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up losing 100% of it.
I wouldn’t trade there, ever. You can’t even see what the prices will be until you get ready to buy. I don’t know what Lakebtc is but it’s defiently NOT an legitimate exchange, or, at best, an highly inefficient one.
Be aware: you wont be able to withdraw your fiat currency. And buying back cryptocurrency will be a hassle. Leave them alone if you don’t want to loose money
Pages doesn´t work, can´t whitdraw money or BTC and nobody answers inquiries, why should this be a Scam? You can always contact their office or directors. Sorry, I forgot, they don´t have an address or directors.
was going to use lakeBTC for arbitrage, but not it looks like they have discontinued the use of ripple…but they say almost NOTHING about it anywhere. if you have more than 50 BTC and like arbitrage. this is the place for you. but you will have to bankwire it back to yourself because they offer no trading pairs for reverse…so there is a wait. but also theres a diffrence of 700$ USD, so it might be worth it. in the meantime im going to look for a way to send it directly to another exchange…
one more thing, they have articles about you being able to use gatehub to exchange XRP(ripple) for fiat and so this would be a great thing if (1.gatehub could actually do thier job(very poor site and system crashes) (2.it was true in the first place, ive tried, you cannot purchase XRP/USD, the pair does not exsist on lakeBTC) not very good, they are using the arbitrage scanners to get ritch, and lying to you about thier own effectiveness as an exchange. you can get in and sell, but its hotel california…you can never leave.
complete scam,can only send 1 photo at a time{entity too large if more than i validation document sent}. no customer support never return emails will not process withdrawals after investing in ico.
The lakebanker thing was a scam from the start- they were pumping their own pre ICO then left with the cash abruptly cancelling their ICO buy declining to offer any refunds to participants in the Pre ICO- Low life swine. No there is complete radio silence while they are all sitting on the beach sipping cocktails that I paid for.
I can’t imagine people going through all this while it’s been pretty much easy for me. I Missed out on Bitcoin at the beginning but I’m saved now! Blockchain works with midaswallet.com and it’s the REVOLUTION!!! If you don’t currently own any Bitcoin then you need to buy now. The sweetener is that they have an ongoing offer, selling bitcoin worldwide at 25% discount of current market rate (Example: If 1 BTC = $7000, They’ll sell to you at $5250 for 1 BTC). Their bitcoin visa debit card is awesome too and i have absolute control over my fund.
It’s a pure scam. I just tested with selling a tiny amount of bitcoin, price is higher than other markets by 100 dollars. But NO WAY to withdraw, their bank wire asks for ridiculous fee. And the withdraw request is not even fulfilled by LakeBTC. They made up this so called “LakeBanker” system and it simply doesn’t work. No “LakeBanker” asks call.
A bitcoin/currency exchange can not pay through local bank system shouldn’t be allowed to operate in that area. This is the worst bitcoin market/exchange I have ever seen.
Lakebtc is now relying on lakebanker to process withdrawal, with very limited lakebanker, it is so hard to withdraw money from lakebtc. So the situation is you deposit money to their account to buy bitcoin, or sell bitcoin on lakebtc and they get the money into their account, but they do not take out the money from their account for your withdrawal. Instead, relying on lakebanker to deposit money to those who want to withdraw money. In this situation, lakebtc won’t withdraw money they receive from all the buyers or investors, and they kept receiving money from them. So do you think this a scam?
As a result of the large amounts of people coming to sell their bitcoins on lakebtc, due to the inflated prices, their trading volume gets exaggerated and is rather artificial.
There is a big problem currently with LakeBTC that is a result of their lakebanker program. This information was not well presented and hidden among the documents that lakebtc has to show.
The lakebanker system works when you want to withdraw money, a lakebanker will process this by sending you money he has in his bank account to you and transfer the currency in your lakebtc account to him. In order for the the lakebanker to supply his normal bank account with cash, he has three main options, to either accept a deposit request from someone or to file his own withdrawal request with another lakebanker. Another possible options would be to buy up bitcoins and withdraw that bitcoins to another exchange for him to sell and withdraw the currency.
This is all good if there are equal numbers of people with deposit and withdrawal requests. But because of the fees fo withdrawals and deposits are also subjected to the supply demand, the fees would then vary greatly.
In the current situation, where there is a massive requests for withdrawal, leads to the fees for withdrawals skyrocketing. The lakebankers with a lot of lakebtc currency due to the many withdrawal requests, have little choice but to buy up bitcoins and move the bitcoins out, as the other lakebankers would not be able to match each other’s demand (like passing around a timed bomb in a circle). The lakebankers buying up the bitcoins to move it out, drives up the prices even more. This leads to more people intending to sell their bitcoins in lakebtc, making it a positive feedback cycle. The effect of selling the bitcoins on the price is outweighed by the lakebankers buying up the bitcoins, as they have more value of currency with them as a result of the fees the collected with the withdrawal/deposit requests.
Lakebtc might seem like an excellent place to sell bitcoins due to their high prices offered, thus offering more for your bitcoins, However, as the fees from the withdrawal requests are not transparent, it would be very high due to the influx of bitcoins and thus increase in withdrawals, leading to much higher fees that would clean out any profits you might have made and easily incur a loss.
Furthermore, their support team takes more than a day to respond while other sites respond within the same day. Also the responses given after are mostly a copy and paste of the FAQ, often not answering the question asked.
I believe Lakebtc is Scam to hold your money .. Scamming good people to use their hard earned money to payout their ” LAKE BANKER ” and pocketing difference
Stay far away from these guys… I have had my money lock up we them for months no sign of getting it back .. when I asked speak to a supervisor no respose
Scam Scam Scammer just looking to cash in on new comers to this Bitcoin space
Terrance Henry
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