Mercatox is shady. No bad experiences with them myself as I have avoided them based on the experiences of others but mercatox has a long history of shady practices that are well documented especially when the price of XRB (now Nano) climbed exponentially in December. People had their coins locked up for months on there. I would not be surprised at all if what you are noticing is very real. I would also advise not using mercatox moving forward.
I'm bummed to hear that. I really hope that it can all be explained by scaling up and other technical issues, but I hear you. I'll keep watching as long as I'm trading there. It still has the best volume for BTC/NOTE. However, I have found that with patience I can buy DNotes a lot cheaper on Stocks.exchange. I'm trading on both.
My verification on Mercatox is pending so I can only withdraw 0.5 BTC every 24 hours, but other than that, I have had no issue with withdrawing either BTC or NOTE. Right now BTC wallet is in maintenance.
We have always believed trust will play a major role in digital currency mass adoption. This is part of the reason we created the DNotesVault and ask users not to store your coins on exchanges if you are not actively trading them.
You can search any exchange and add the word scam to it and find hundreds of scam accusations and problems reported, even the most clearly legitimate ones like coinbase. Not to undermine anyone's real experiences and issues, there are real problems and we intend to help alleviate those issues. I'm sure many of you who have been around for a while can attest, we could fill the forum with stories. For now, all we can do is work with what we got while working toward something better.
You make an excellent point Joe. I've yet to hear of any exchange where there haven't been a litany of user issues and accusations of unethical activity (which most people quickly jump to whenever something cannot be easily explained). That said, some exchanges are patently garbage -- slow, unresponsive and running away with or trading with user funds on their own platform. These exchanges are much worse than the others.
One thing I can attest to however, is the worryingly low level of competency & ethical practices followed by exchanges in this industry. As Joe said before, we plan to be one of the first groups to build enterprise-grade exchanges that will eliminate many of the criticisms cryptocurrency users have today by following ethical practices. We will be one of the only groups around that will have shareholders to answer to, and this means a certain level of fiduciary responsibility.
DNotes is here to make its mark on the industry -- from currency, to exchanges, to news & education, through to loans and debit card solutions. We plan to pull the industry up to the new level that is deserving of the technologies potential.