Shady counterparty, stopped trade and lost complete deposit

Hello fellow bisq users,

Yesterday I noticed an offer from a BTC seller for 0.125 BTC and I deposited 0.0126 BTC in the multisig wallet to take it.

When my deposit reached one confirmation I received the banking information of my counterparty to send the money. This time there was a company on the other side with “liteforex” in their name.

This seemed very shady to me. Why would a registered investments company trade BTC on a platform built for privacy and evading KYC/AML regulations? After some thinking I decided it would be better not to get my bank account info messed up in this (in case they get investigated or something).

So I opened a dispute and explained my reasons for wanting to stop the trade. I also told the arbitrator in advance that I agreed to lose my transaction and trade fee and that I wanted to cover the trade/transaction fees of my counterparty.

An hour later the arbitrator tells me it’s possible to cancel the trade but that there will be a fee.

Today the ticket is closed with the message: “I will cancel the trade now but know that you will lose the deposit.”

I understand losing my trade and transaction fees and paying for those of my counterparty, but losing my complete deposit? That seems a bit unfair… My deposit was 0.0126 BTC while my counterparty perhaps lost 1/10th of that in costs.

Can somebody explain the arbitrator’s behaviour to me?

Kind regards,
bisqUser1

If you break the rules of the trade protocol you lose your security deposit. What seems to be your main issue here is that you didn’t like who the other trader was and this isn’t a valid reason to stop the trade without losing the security deposit.

The security deposit was awarded to the other trader because from their point of view you wasted their time for no reason. Imagine I take an offer to buy BTC from you using SEPA. Then I wait a couple of days and just cancel it. You’d deserve the security deposit.

The info in this post regarding the security deposit will help you. The rest is outdated.

3 Likes

I had a similar situation. I saw a rare name of an hotel to make the SEPA payment, and I did it. As far as I know there was nothing strange with that trade, it was long time ago.
I aggree with huey that your reason to stop the trade is not valid.