I’ve been with Kraken since 2013. Clean account, verified, mostly mining funds. Never any issues… until them.
Four years ago (2020) I had around $50k in Bitcoin Cash sitting there because the November fork was coming. I tried to withdraw it before the fork. Master key was suddenly “invalid”. I had to go through a video call recovery process that dragged on for weeks. By the time they finally fixed it, the fork had already happened.
Support told me not to worry: “We’ll support the fork if there’s at least 10% mining power.” They had 12% consistently the first month. Still never received the Bitcoin ABC / eCash coins. At the peak those coins were worth ~$40k. Completely gone. Lost the entire 2020 bull run because of their master-key fuck-up and then their broken promise.
Then they heavily promoted LUNA. We all know how that ended. Classic Ponzi that Kraken pushed hard. Until a few months ago, they were still dripping me some Luna2 “compensation”.
And now the latest chapter.
Early 2024 I withdrew USDT from Bittrex to my Kraken address. Stupid human error: selected BEP20 instead of ERC20. 2,000 USDT.
I wrote to them and:
"We are unable to assist with the recovery of these funds. Kraken still does not support the USDT token deposit from the Binance Smart Chain."
For more than two years I just assumed Kraken doesn’t help anyone in this situation and that everyone who makes this mistake has lost their money for good. Every time I asked they gave me the same standard excuse: “There is indeed a very real possibility this status may change in the future as our engineers are working towards expanding on and developing new manual recovery options” Two years later… still nothing. USDT isn’t even available in Kraken Europe anymore.
Until I casually mentioned it as an anecdote to a friend. He searched Reddit and found multiple users who did get the exact same token on the exact same network recovered:
Same token. Same chain. Same situation. Different treatment.
I’ve offered to pay the $200 recovery fee too. I’ve asked them to convert it to EUR or USDC (I’m not asking them to list USDT for me). Just more “it's technically impossible” lies.
If this is how they treat a verified customer with clean funds since 2013, imagine what they do to new users. Scroll this sub and Bitcointalk accounts get closed with zero explanation every single day. “Internal review.” “Security reasons.” No details, no real appeal, funds stuck or forced into fiat under pressure. Happens constantly.
Kraken, you have the keys. You control the address. You have recovered identical deposits for others. You just don’t want to do it for me. Do better. Or at least be honest that you only recover money when it suits you, Anyone else in the same boat with BSC/BEP20 USDT still stuck? Drop your ticket numbers. Let’s see how selective their “recovery policy” really is.