So the UK government in their boundless wisdom have chosen to restrict us UK plebs from withdrawing funds from BINANCE and completely blocking our access to the Earn services offered on the Binance platform.
This was for our own good though, as although I have been using Binance for years without any real issues whatsoever, Binance is not FCA approved so I, and other UK citizens, need protecting from ourselves and use a company that has this moniker bestowed upon its name. The FCA is the Financial Conduct Authority after all
As a result of this decision my hand was forced into sending some funds to Swissborg as I can now no longer use Binance, which currently continues to go from strength to strength it appears. I was attempting to avoid the high fees at COINBASE so I chose to use an exchange I had previously registered at, and passed their KYC checks as requested, before I had settled at Binance originally (when I could still use it).
I sent a fair amount of Polygon (MATIC) to Swissborg but silly me, I made the mistake of sending it on the chain. Who would have thought with the token itself being called and it being the native token specifically designed for use on the blockchain that I should send it on that specific chain? What a fool I had been. I should have know to send it over the base Ethereum network with huge gas fees.
My sarcasm aside, the instruction to send it over the ETH network, although confusing and (possibly even misleading?) in wording is included in their app. (The wording is definitely confusing because I read the guidance sending the funds and I firstly thought my sending over the Polygon blockchain was perfectly acceptable under their guidance note). Once the funds never arrived in my Swissborg account however, I read the deposit guidance note a couple more times and realized that I had made a mistake.
I already knew my funds would be recoverable obviously due to the natural ETH/Polygon blockchain architecture but I was a little alarmed when I discovered the fee that Swissborg are to be charging me for the ‘recovery’ of my funds. The original Swissborg agent I talked to said I would be charged the equivalent of $175 (or nearly a fifth the value of the funds I had sent in total) for this service. I accepted it without any major grumbling making a point to myself to re-read deposit guidance notes multiple times in the future. I was told that their special recovery team would start on this right away.
It got worse however after a period of around a week an a half. In this time I had only been contacted by Swissborg to be interrogated by them about the nature of my whereabouts and where I was accessing their platform from, but I had not had any updates about the recovery of my funds.
I re-inquired and discovered that they had seemingly disregarded or forgotten the whole (pretty important) conversation about the failed deposit altogether and that the recovery of my funds (after resending the details again) could now take up to three weeks from this new date. I was also informed that the fee for the recovery would now be 187.060 Polygon for whatever reason. At the time this was taking place that accounted for well over $175 in value that they claim they charge for their service. I have not even questioned this however because I am simply too tired with them and they appear to be too inept to give me a reasonable answer anyway.
It has been over a month since this whole situation began and I have yet to receive any funds back. In the mean time the value of Polygon has predictably tanked. I was looking for a quick exchange before the dip.
I have ended up back at Coinbase for now. They are expensive but at least they are reliable. They also deserve support for standing up against the corrupt SEC and for their fight in clarifying regulations for the future of cryptocurrencies.
I’m not sure what’s going on with Swissborg. My very initial deposit with them took that long to process that it looked like it might never arrive but they were okay since. I know they are having a big push to be a player in the web-3 gaming sector and maybe they have simply forgotten why they grew a customer base in the first place. I hope this is the case and that they are not withholding funds because they are in financial trouble.
Anyways I digress, without the UK government forcing my hand all this would not have been possible. Once again I must thank my authorities for keeping me safe in the world of cryptocurrency and I must commend them on what a great job they are doing. I would be in trouble now if I could still use Binance. Oh wait..
