I've been emailed for the longest time by Bittrex saying they're shutting my account or whatever they're doing with everyone else too.

I didn't think much of it since I haven't actually used Bittrex since about 2014.

That is until the final warnings started coming in which actually informed me I had $200 in there!!

But I only had week or so left by that point and, alas, I obviously didn't have my 2-factor authentication anymore since I've switched phones about 7 times since then. No bother, I thought, I'll just turn it off.

But you need your passport for that and their security insists you have to do it via your phone camera live, rather than upload a picture. This was a problem because I DIDN'T HAVE MY PASSPORT.

Bureaucracy costing me money again

It was being held at ransom by the CCP as they insisted the address I registered with the police (yeah you have to do that here) was wrong and I actually moved out already. I double checked my surroundings to make sure I was in fact still living where I said I was, but apparently I needed to get proof anyway.

The HR was absolutely useless, sending just one message to me per day (still vacation time at this point). Most messages were just 'are you SURE you are in the same place?' 'Why did they say it's wrong if it's not wrong?'

Several days and multiple visits to multiple police stations later, it was actually my fiancé in the end who kicked them into gear by herself while I went to my first day back at work, and she somehow got it all sorted.

I sent the NEW document of proof to the HR, who ignored me for several more days, at which point my hopes of getting the precious $200 from Bittrex was now dwindling. I asked each day, and at best I got 'I don't know when'.

The Final Countdown

The deadline was the 31st August, and it was fast approaching. 4 days left, 2 days... On the 30TH! - but thankfully different time zones - right before I clocked out of work, I could pick up my passport and start the stupid Bittrex 2FA cancellation process.

Success! Time to withdraw...

404, you have no such permission, fool

Argh. Turns out you need to wait 24 HOURS after cancelling the 2FA. Thankfully since the US is like 12 hours behind, I just managed to complete the whole process withing three hours of the deadline, by converting BTC to Hive and lob that into my Hive wallet here.

I'm in the money!

It was quite a hassle, but I realized that in 2014, bitcoin was about $600, so I actually made roughly 50x profit from a leftover $4 lol.

Pretty neat.

Stupid Bittrex

Addendum

I actually messaged Bittrex-supportl on twitter about this at first, and their help service account got back to me providing me with a link where I can send the money direct to my wallet. I just had to provide my Hive private key into the box.

Yeah it wasn't a typo above. Turns out the scammers write very similar usernames with a subtle little letter like L at the end, or something else barely noticeable on a quick glance.

For some reason they didn't reply. Not very helpful.