When an exchange is new, they routinely make sure that they do not make the wrong moves that make it difficult for users to be too careful to use their services. We recently came upon Tviton, an automatic exchange that users have raised complaints about.
In this review, we shall explain what this exchange does, the reservation that people have about it and the reason to be very careful if you’re considering using Tviton for a quick swap of your coins.
What is Tviton.net?
Tviton is an exchange where a user can quickly swap one cryptocurrency for another. It is a centralized exchange that is run by a central entity. This is why the funds that you send actually are held by the company and then exchanged by the company for an equivalent value of the coin that the owner wants to receive.
For instance, you can change your bitcoin to ethereum or change your monero to litecoin on such automatic exchanges. The reason people use them is speed. A genuine automatic exchange would receive your coins and send you its equivalent in another coin that you want.
All you have to do is send your coin to the address provided by the exchange, then you also provide your address for the coin that you want to receive. The duration in which you receive the exchanged cryptocurrency depends on the network speed of the digital currencies that you’re sending and receiving.
How Long Has This Exchange Been in Business?
From the domain search at Whois.com, it is evident that Tviton.net was registered on September 15, 2021. This means that this exchange is less than 3 months old. So it is safe to posit that not many users are using its services.
The implication of this is that, unless the exchange is well-funded, sending your coins to them may not be a good idea since they wouldn’t have the liquidity to meet the demand of all the customers. This is one of the reasons why many crypto exchanges use crowd-sale to raise funds before they make their services open to the public.
We do not recall any public sale by this exchange. This is why we are of the opinion that using such new exchanges that people are having issues with should be avoided.
A User’s Experience
For instance, one user at Bitcointalk reported their experience with Tviton in October.
According to Erre, they made a deposit of 2000 lumens with the hope to have it swapped for bitcoins, but the coin they expected was not sent to their wallet.
The reason given by Tviton is that they did not specify a memo while sending the coins. Now, it is a standard that a person should send a memo while doing this, but the inability to do so should not imply that the coins sent are not accessible to the exchange.
Three days ago I found some stellar lumen that I got from the initial airdrop, i checked the value that was still not negligible (600€) and as the bitcoin maximalist that I am I immediately searched for a place to sold them for btc with the less possible hassle.
I found a list of instant exchanges and I decided to give tviton.net a try .
I rapidly checked from some Google information but there were none, and I made a very stupid reasoning: since I am usually over-paranoid , risking for one time could be acceptable. Remember I was in a rush to sell the money I forgot about without hassles. How stupid I was.
Immediately after the tx (2000 xlm, that was also because the minimum was pretty high- 1500 -) the site support wrote to me that I forgot the MEMO, and they started to ask weird questions. At this point, I am pretty sure I was scammed, but you can judge yourself. Is the liquidity pool explanation of any chance? Do I have some chances to recover my money?
So the question folks have been asking is:
“Why is Tviton unwilling to return the coins sent since they were sent to a wallet that they control?”
Lessons To Learn from Erre
One of the takeaway from this issue is that Erre never did a background check on Tviton, even though they tried checking up something on Google. The fact that there was no information of Tviton should have been a red flag. At least, it is an indication that they’re dealing with a new exchange.
If an exchange is new, it may not necessarily be unreliable. Nevertheless, it makes sense to only send your cryptocurrencies to exchanges that others have actually used successfully. This is the only way that others won’t be learning from your mistake.
Why Are There No Reviews About Them?
The reason that there were no reviews about Tviton is that they haven’t been in business long enough for people to say anything good or bad about them. So with the case of Erre, what we can infer is that this is an exchange that will not go the extra mile to make sure that they satisfy their clients. You could lose your funds there on some flimsy excuses even if Tviton is not an outright scam.
Why Didn’t Tviton Return Erre’s Funds?
According to Tviton, the reason why they could not return the funds sent by Erre is because they didn’t include a memo in their transaction. A memo is a way of communicating with the party you’re transacting with on the Stellar network. The absence of a memo could result in the loss of funds, especially in a really big exchange with many customers. Even in such instances, a serious exchange would manually sort out the fund.
“Exchanges often require users to include memos with their deposits. This is because exchanges usually only use one or a few accounts for receiving deposits, and they need a way to distinguish one user’s deposit from another. Not including a memo in such cases may result in lost funds. If you are sending funds to an exchange outside the Blockchain.com Wallet, be sure to check whether the exchange requires you to include a memo. If so, the exchange will provide it.”
Tviton is rather a small exchange with low user traffic. This is why we are of the opinion that what Tviton has done is rather suspicious. A low traffic exchange that just started operations cannot logically claim that it lost the fund sent to its wallet because the user didn’t use a memo. What we believe is that Tviton intentionally withheld the funds, which is an indication that you may be dealing with a scam exchange here.
What more, according to the information made available by Erre, Tviton support demanded that they send more funds in XLM to enable them manually track the funds sent to them, but they still wouldn’t return the sent funds. This means that Tviton is a shady exchange.
Where Are The Funds?
According to Tviton support, they’re using a wallet pool. That is debatable. Nevertheless, that shouldn’t make it impossible to locate the funds sent by a customer.
Furthermore, there is no indication on the terms of service seen at the site that users would lose funds sent without a memo. Even big exchanges sort out issues like this. You’d wonder why a new exchange cannot.
What Are The Risks Involved in Swapping With Tviton?
The risk is that you could lose your funds since they do not make a convincing effort to prove that they are a genuine exchange. This is why we suggest that you always use established and reputable exchanges for all your coin swaps.
