Bitcastle – Scam, Reviews, High Fees and No Support
Bitcastle is a crypto exchange which relaunched in May 2022. Since its arrival, the company has received a plethora of complaints from disgruntled clients. They have a simple-looking website which doesn’t stand out much.
Did You Know?
The most prominent mark in the American consumer history is the ‘ Dodd-Frank Act’. The Act prevents the risk, ceasing the occurrence of a complete financial crisis. The Act also provides common-sense protection for American families by preventing exploitation from pay-day lenders and mortgage firms.
However, the primary issue in this crypto exchange is its shady terms and conditions which even allow the firm to seize all of your assets. Moreover, the company uses unethical marketing tactics as well.
The following review will shed more light on this crypto exchange and help you decide if it’s worth your money:
About Bitcastle: Platform, Fees, Deposit, Withdrawal and More
Bitcastle.io is a crypto exchange based in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, a notorious offshore location. They relaunched in May 2022 and claims to provide its customers with an easy and safe way to trade cryptocurrencies.
The crypto exchange claims it doesn’t charge any deposit fees but that’s a lie. On their fees page, you’d see this claim in big bold letters:
However, when you check out the FAQs they have provided in their “Help & Support” section, you’d see that they charge 8% fees for depositing with cards:
Furthermore, they have added that they can change their deposit fees whenever they want without notifying you.
In terms of withdrawal fees, the platform has different rates for every cryptocurrency. For example, without ETH requires you to pay 0.01675 ETH which comes out to be $30. Again, this is extremely high.
For Bitcoin, they charge 0.001055 BTC at the moment which roughly translates to $30 as well.
In other words, the Bitcastle withdrawal fee is $30. This is very high according to the industry standard.
Moreover, the company doesn’t share any information on which payment methods it accepts. For withdrawals, they ask for a “Withdrawal address” and require you to confirm it through a confirmation email. Then, they ask you to wait for 3-4 days to complete the transaction.
While researching for my Bitcastle review, I found that the company doesn’t process withdrawals in any legal tender. You can only get cryptocurrencies from this place. This can be quite bothersome for many users.
They Don’t Have Much Customer Support
It’s crucial for a crypto exchange to provide its customers with good and accessible customer support. Bitcastle suffers in this regard as well.
Their Help & Support page has several FAQs and a contact form. That’s it.
The company does not provide any live chat nor any contact numbers. You can only contact them through their contact form. Bitcastle doesn’t even provide you with an email.
Not only is this tedious but it restricts your ability to share your concerns properly. Clearly, the company needs to work a lot on improving its customer service department.
As you’ll read the various reviews, you’ll realize this company needs to work heavily on its customer support:
Bitcastle Reviews: What Their Customers Say
When you google “Bitcastle review” you will find a ton of complaints online. Now, for a company that has relaunched itself recently, this is a huge red flag.
It suggests the company doesn’t care much about its customers.
Most of the complaints against this crypto exchange call Bitcastle a scam while others complain about the long waiting times for the withdrawal. Here are some of the many complaints this platform has received:
“Bitcastle is a scam”
The above reviewer calls it a bunch of scammers. They complain that the withdrawal fees of this cryptocurrency exchange are extremely high and I don’t disagree.
Several others have called this company a scam:
Note that Bitcastle has received all of these reviews within the first 2 weeks of its relaunch. It means many of the people who signed up there didn’t get the experience they expected.
Another Common Review Topic: Excessively Long Withdrawal Process
Apart from the people calling Bitcastle.io a scam, there were plenty others who complained about the excessively long withdrawal process.
The above reviewer highlighted said they will process his withdrawal within 2 days. Then, they extended the period to 4 days. Afterward, they said it would take 2 more weeks.
He says the company is nothing but a scam that never processes your withdrawals.
Like most others, he also complains about the $30 withdrawal fees of this crypto exchange.
According to Erfend here, withdrawals at Bitcastle take 3 weeks to process. Furthermore, the CEO is nothing but a social media marketer hence he doesn’t recommend the platform.
Clearly, the customers of this crypto exchange don’t recommend this platform at all.
The “Bitcastle Review Campaign” – Trying to Bury Customer Complaints
As you may have noticed, this crypto exchange has already racked up a ton of negative reviews because of its poor customer support and high withdrawal fees.
However, instead of fixing these issues, the people behind Bitcastle tried to use a very unethical marketing tactic.
They ran a “Bitcastle Review Campaign” from 10 May 2022 to 23 May 2022. The company asked people to post a review on Bitcastle on Twitter by using #bitcastlereview.
Bitcastle claimed they will give one person $100 in their platform through a daily draw.
The sole purpose of their “Bitcastle Review Campaign” was to flood their twitter with fake incentivized reviews. Keep in mind, it’s illegal in most countries to give financial incentive to your customers in exchange for a review.
What Bitcastle was doing through this campaign would be illegal in the US and many other countries.
They wanted to bury the numerous complaints they had received and thought this would be the best solution. However, it didn’t do much.
It’s pretty common among shady corporations and fraudsters to utilize such unethical marketing tactics.
PointPay is another shady crypto exchange which uses fake reviews to promote itself.
Shady Provisions in Their Terms and Conditions:
Apart from the excessive withdrawal fees, unethical marketing campaign, and a nonexistent customer support, Bitcastle has several more problems.
I inspected the ‘Terms of Use’ document of Bitcastle. There, I found a ton of problematic provisions which give the platform a lot more power over its users’ funds.
The first red flag I found was a clause which allowed Bitcastle to change the fee structure without notifying you. They can change their fees overnight and charge you more whenever they want:
Apart from that, they can set different deposit and withdrawal limits for your account. Although they don’t mention any limits for deposits or withdrawals on their website, it’s obvious they have some.
Again, they can change these limits whenever they please:
Furthermore, if you don’t use your account for 12 months, the company can freeze all the assets and funds present in it. Most exchanges resort to charging an inactivity fee but Bitcastle wants to take away everything you have.
The company can seize the assets you own as well as the funds you have in your Bitcastle account:
In the HIGH&LOW section of their ‘Terms of Use’ document, Bitcastle.io states that the company has discretions which directly affect your trading. However, the company states it doesn’t need to act in your good faith.
Bitcastle Can “Amend” or Cancel Your Orders Without Your Permission:
Below is the scariest clause in their terms and conditions. According to the following clause, they can cancel or amend the orders you place on their exchange. Certainly, this is a huge red flag because it gives them too much power over you.
They can do this without requiring your permission. It states “Bitcastle reserves the right to perform this at its sole discretion”. Scary.
Suppose your account doesn’t have sufficient funds to pay some fee they want to charge you. In that case, Bitcastle can “deduct any or all assets” your account has.
Conclusion
After going through the above points, it’s obvious that Bitcastle is a sketchy platform. They have excessively high withdrawal fees, they lie about their deposit fee and they don’t have much customer support.
The company ran a “Bitcastle Review” campaign just to bury the numerous complaints it had received within a few weeks of its launch. Certainly, they are a shady organization you should avoid at all costs.
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I don’t recommend Bitcastle for multiple reasons- 1) fees too high 2) no customer support 3) poor interface. There are so many better cryptocurrency exchanges out there. My experience with them was sheer disappointment.
Bitcastle is one of those scams which will take hundreds of thousands of dollars from people and will vanish overnight.