Trolls/Scammers active on the XMR/BTC market

Just a heads-up for people that cannot have funds locked up for long periods of time.
It seems somebody is making new bisq accounts repeatedly, taking a trade to sell BTC, wait for the other side to send XMR, then never use the account again. They don’t confirm they received the funds, resulting in BTC funds being locked up. I’ve repeatedly sent messages over the past days, no reply after i sent the funds.

Trying to get funds unlocked with mediation now, which takes forever, and they cannot release funds either so this is going to be interesting. Hope i didn’t lose a whole bunch of BTC.

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Hey, I payed with SEPA for 0.1 BTC a few days ago and the seller never responded.
He now has my money but I didn’t receive anything.

Any ideas on what I can do?
“Open trade and accept or reject suggestion from mediator” (I don’t know how or what this means, cannot find anything)

Thanks in advance

At least you’re getting response from the mediators, i’ve been waiting for two days, no reply on any of the support tickets i’ve opened.
Iirc, the mediator can escalate the issue to an arbitrator, who can release funds. However i think that’s a legacy process and i’m not sure if that still works. Hopefully our money isn’t stuck in limbo forever.

Little update. Got a hold of the mediator. Some of the mediator tickets do not seem to have been propagated properly and not show up for him. The others were closed with a proposal.
I re-opened the tickets and will check later with the mediator if they show up now.

I may be in the same situation.
My two XMR/BTC sell offers were taken respectively on Mar 29.
And both takers haven’t responded since then.
I think they are intentionally ignoring my trades because both of the payment methods were altcoins instant and I sent XMR to them in 30 minutes or so.
Now I am waiting for a suggestion from a mediator.
I trust that arbitrators will release BTC if my two trades last more than 10 days with following this rule https://docs.bisq.network/trading-rules.html#arbitration.
But this is a horrible experience and Bisq may need some regulations if this kind of case happens regularly.

Hi. After you enter Mediation, the Mediator will take a look at the case and make a suggestion to both of the trades on how to finish the trade. I believe that’s what you’re being presented with?! You can read more on the documentation about how the Arbitration works.

@invertedbob @tatata

When you enter into a trade your funds are sent to a 2-of-2 multisig between you and the other trader. And only the two of you together can release the funds from it. The Altcoin payment method has a maximum period of 1 day and the Altcoin Instant one of 1 hour. The trader who goes past this period should lose their security deposit. The Mediator will create a transaction enforcing so and the two traders need to agree with it.
If not, the next option is to enter Arbitration. This will be available 10 days (for altcoins and 20 days for national currencies) after the Deposit transaction gets its first confirmation. Entering into Arbitration will involve sending the funds in the 2-of-2 multisig to the Bisq Donation Address and requesting the Refund Agent to adjudicate the dispute as they see fit out of their pocket.

So for a non-responsive trader you will have to wait 10 days in order to enter Arbitration and have the Refund Agent begin to deal with your ticket.

The security deposit is in place to discourage this type of behavior. The default is 15% of the trade amount and the btc-seller-offer-maker can increase that value for the btc-buyer-offer-taker. Other than that there are currently no other tools to discourage/prevent this behavior.

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Thanks for the reply.

The trader who goes past this period should lose their security deposit.

Is this right?
The solution I received from a mediator suggests a payout of the trading peer’s security deposit if I don’t misunderstand it.

Anyway, I will wait for another few days.
And if the trader doesn’t respond I will request arbitration in order for the trader to lose his security deposit.
(according to the arbitration rule, arbitration is available if one or both traders reject a mediator’s suggested resolution)

Update: All trades now got handled by the mediator. Waiting on arbitration now. Patience…!
In my opinion this should really change.

Please do share your opinions on how to improve it. This is the proposal for this trade protocol that got accepted. In the first posts in that thread you can read the description and the rest will inform you of the pros and cons.

update:
My trading peer hasn’t responded yet and 10 days have passed after the deposit tx got the first confirmation.

Does an arbitrator contact me within 5 days and the arbitration or the reimbursement process start after that?
Or should I do something to get it started?

my current situation:
-My mediator already offered me the suggestion and I accepted it.
-All the deposited BTC seems to send to another address by timelocked tx.

and one more question…
All the deposited BTC sent to 3MwfxAmo9YRWmufCJB1tJhtV24NfYN8dTy.
Is this Bisq donation address?
I thought BTC donation addresses are as follows.
burningman2 : 3A8Zc1XioE2HRzYfbb5P8iemCS72M6vRJV
burning2019 : 3EtUWqsGThPtjwUczw27YCo6EWvQdaPUyp

It should be 3A8Zc1XioE2HRzYfbb5P8iemCS72M6vRJV. There hasn’t been any change that I know of.

Oh my god…
3MwfxAmo9YRWmufCJB1tJhtV24NfYN8dTy is related to the following issue.

And the deposited BTCs of other trades(8 trades in total) seem to be sent to this address in a day or so.

Please tell me if my trade information is needed to solve this issue.

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He’s somehow manipulated the donation address for arbitration, big oversight by developers. Assume those funds to be lost.

A lot of people were saying this new trade protocol was a bad idea with a rushed implementation as soon as it was announced.

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It seems so.
I currently contacted a mediator and will wait patiently for the compensation plan.

https://bisq.network/statement-security-vulnerability-april-2020

Here’s the official announcement - The DAO will submit a proposal to compensate affected traders. Standby for more information related to this.

Thank you for sharing the information.
Bisq dealt with this issue quickly!