Consumer complaint received 2022-09-08
Company: BlockFi Inc
State: CA
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Virtual currency
Issue: Other transaction problem

Complaint:
In 2021 I started an account with BlockFi, who provided interest bearing accounts on cryptocurrencies you deposit with them similar to savings accounts. They provide crypto wallet addresses specifically for the account holder to send the deposits to, and those wallets are maintained by a third party custodian, I believe either XXXX or XXXX are who they use for custodial services. 

Back in XXXX of XXXX, I deposited just short of {$10000.00} worth of the stablecoin XXXX  ( XXXX XXXX ) over a couple days to my deposit address they provided me for XXXX. At the time however, the deposit page they provided did not specifically say to only deposit the XXXX XXXX version of XXXX  ( XXXX ) to the address given to me. Since it did not specify that, I sent the XXXX XXXX XXXX  version of XXXX  ( XXXX ) which was made to be compatible with XXXX  XXXX wallet addresses. 

My deposits made it to my provided deposit wallet address successfully. I can see the transactions on the XXXX just fine when looking up the wallet address. My nearly {$10000.00} worth of XXXX is still sitting in that address untouched and safe, but since it wasn't sent in XXXX, they refuse to credit it to me and claim that it is lost money that they hold no liability for and can do nothing to recover it. 

That however is not true, and they simply just don't want to help recover it, and say they can't because the wallets belong to their third party custodian who provided them with the addresses they gave to me. Now when I try to contact the custodians about it, they won't even talk to me because I don't actually have an account with them, BlockFi does, yet BlockFi refuses to contact them on my behalf to remedy the situation. 

Fixing this can be done in a matter of a few minutes if they wanted to be cooperative and it can be done in 2 different ways ... the first way would be for BlockFi to ask their custodian maintaining my deposit wallet address, to provide me with the recovery passphrase key, so that I could import that wallet address into a wallet app on my phone like XXXX, so that I can have access to the contents of it and just send that XXXX  back to my wallet I had sent it from. 

The other simple way to fix it would be for the custodian to simply switch the network on the wallet from their app from the XXXX  network to the XXXX network, which can be done in less than minute, so that they can see the XXXX  that is being held by that address which isnt visible while on the XXXX network, and then just send that XXXX  back to the same address which it came from. Recently I even sent some XXXX to that wallet address, which would be needed to pay for the transaction fee to send that XXXX  back to me, just to make it a quick and hassle free process for them to take care of. 

I should point out that there have been multiple other people who have had the same exact problem here with BlockFi that I am having, sending XXXX XXXX  instead of XXXX XXXX and BlockFi was not willing to help them either and claim they hold no blame and did nothing wrong. However if that were true, then they wouldn't have had to later update the deposit address page to start specifying XXXX tokens only, which you can see in the photos I've attached. They changed it because after this happened to multiple people they realized they partially negligent by not being clear on the original page, and they wouldn't have needed to change it if they did no wrong. 

BlockFi pays a third party to provide and maintain these wallet addresses for them, to provide to us.. If part of their agreement dictates they can't be given the recovery keys by the custodian for the wallets to provide me with or can't have the custodian directly provide me with the keys to my deposit wallet address so that I could have access to recover my digital assets instantly, they can at least ask the custodian to simply open the wallet on the XXXX XXXX really quick, so they can see the XXXX in there, and just send it back to the same address it came from, using the XXXX I recently added to more than cover the transaction fee. It isn't some complex and impossible task like they claim.. but they insist on not helping and so for over a year, a large sum of valuable digital assets of mine have been sitting there, not collecting interest, and being held hostage from me which someone would eventually get to just pocket if I were to die or something.

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief