Sale of verified accounts on cryptocurrency exchanges
The popularity of cryptocurrencies has caused an explosive growth in the number of cryptocurrency exchanges. The number of trading platforms, where cryptoassets are traded, has reached 400.
Know Your Customer - the principle of correct cryptocurrency exchanges
Many exchanges are regulated by the U.S. and UK financial authorities and operate in compliance with legislation aimed at combating the financing of terrorism and money laundering.
On the one hand, this is a big advantage. Such cryptocurrency exchanges, unlike all sorts of "anarchic" platforms, have an official status with all the ensuing consequences, including insurance of client funds, impossibility to fraud and manipulation of client funds and the functionality of the exchange.
On the other hand, compliance with legal requirements forces each client of the exchange to undergo several levels of verification, providing his personal data: these are scanned copies of documents, personal photographs with the required dates and inscriptions, etc.
The growing popularity of cryptocurrencies has led to a huge influx of new users to cryptocurrency exchanges. According to some reports, the number of applications for registration on the top sites reaches up to 100 thousand people a day.
And here there are certain difficulties. Each new account is verified manually, creating a huge burden on the exchange staff, and making customers wait for confirmation much longer than the stated deadlines. And there is no guarantee that verification will be passed the first time - a scanned copy may be fuzzy, or your face in the photo, according to the exchange employee, will not look like the photo in your passport.
In addition, The "know your customer" principle violates one of the basic principles of cryptocurrency - the anonymity of transactions, which most orthodox bitcoiners, if I may say so, oppose.
All this led to the emergence of a new business - trading of verified accounts on cryptocurrency exchanges.
How to Turn Vasya Petrov into John Smith
The sale of accounts itself is not new. If there is a demand, then of course there will be a supply. If you want, you can find ads about buying and selling accounts in online games, closed forums, etc.
Taking advantage of the popularity of cryptocurrencies and the growing demand, enterprising people began to offer for sale accounts that have already been verified at the top cryptocurrency sites.
It is worth noting that such offers are not rare. Such ads can be found not only on specialized cryptocurrency forums, but also on ordinary Internet sites for buying and selling everything in the world.
That is, if you don't want to provide your personal data for verification to cryptocurrency staff, or for some other reason you just can't pass the verification, you can buy an already verified account registered in John Smith's name. In this way, you will avoid "disclosure" of your identity simply by not messing around with scans and photos with papers in hand.
Is everyone happy and clapping their hands? Don't rush love, you'll be in tears. Buying an account that is already verified is likely to get you into a lot of trouble.
The result of buying an account is always the same
Let us consider two cases:
Case 1. Fraudulent seller
The sale of verified accounts itself can hardly be called an honest business. That is, you have to understand what kind of people are doing it.
Let's say you bought an account on a cryptocurrency exchange, funded your trading account and are looking at buying bitcoin or ethereum "for the whole cutlet". At one point you get unlogged and can no longer log in to your account. What happened?
The point is that the first owner of the account can report its theft at any time and regain access to it. Naturally, all your money is no longer yours, but the attacker's. It is useless to write to the exchange's technical support, because the rules of any cryptocurrency exchange strictly prohibit account transfer.
Case 2. Additional account verification
Let's assume that the seller turned out to be a crystal-clear person selling his account due to disappointment in cryptocurrencies. But no one will protect you from troubles that cryptocurrency exchanges can throw at you.
The User Agreement is a fairly serious and even interesting document. However, most Internet users don't read it. They automatically tick the "I agree to the User Agreement" box.
And they don't read it in vain. Top crypto exchanges clearly state that in case of suspicious transactions (and who knows what will be suspicious for them), the administration freezes all activity on the account and has the right to demand additional confirmation. When the exchange staff will ask you for an additional photo or provide a copy of John Smith's driver's license, what will you do? That's right, cry for the money lost as a result of buying such an account. And the price of such accounts, as you could see from the screenshots, is not the smallest.
Yes, due to the influx of users, many cryptocurrency exchanges have limited the ability to register new users. And you, as if by chance, had an urge to buy bitcoin or etherium at a low price right now, but you don't have time or possibility to verify it. Is this a reason to buy someone else's account? If you do not feel sorry for your money - buy it, because the only result of such purchase will be their unambiguous loss.