Bitfinex Triples Minimum Fee For Wire Withdrawals Without An Announcement

Black Friday was full of amazing deals for consumers, but Bitfinex was easily an exception. On Friday alone, Bitfinex quietly rose their minimum fee for a wire withdrawal by threefold, taking it from $20 to $60. Most of the time, a change like this would elicit some kind of memo to users, but the company remained silent.

This type of change was most likely an effort to reduce the issues with withdrawals that the platform had been facing, but the move makes them one of the most expensive exchanges to withdraw from. They are presently the fifth-largest exchange, based on the adjusted volume reported to CoinMarketCap. The company made several announcements in relation to their token but kept silent about this change. The only way that users would’ve known beforehand is by checking the fee schedule on Bitfinex as soon as it happened.

Head of marketing for Bitfinex, Kasper Rasmussen, didn’t seem to be concerned when asked for a comment by The Block. He said,

“Our fee schedule remains subject to change at any time and for a wide array of reasons. This could reflect added complexities associated with a given token, transaction or process, or supply/demand factors.”

Over the last few months, Bitfinex has had ongoing problems with their withdrawals, dealing with delays of up to a month. There were some situations that ended with a refund to the customers. Considering the possible relation to the issues involved with their payment processor, Crypto Capital, the boost in the minimum fee are an understandable effort to curb that.

Even though this may come as a surprise that the fee increased, it isn’t even the only or first change that the wire-free schedule has endured recently. The Block noted,

“Two weeks ago, Bitfinex added a 3% fee on wire withdrawals that exceed more than $1 million in aggregated value or that accounted for more than two withdrawals during a period of 30 days. Although that fee was also effective immediately, Bitfinex did issue an announcement on that change.”

These two changes appear to be a subtle way of deterring customers from small wire withdrawals, making them more of a burden to initiate. Much of their content encourages consumers to limit their withdrawals to a monthly transaction. Reducing some of the activity for their payment processor helps to take off some of the stress on the system and the bank for processing speed.

Retail customers are the most likely ones to have to deal with the frustration of these higher fees. Basically, a minimum withdrawal will end up being $60,000 for a $60 fee, which is quite a bundle for a customer that isn’t consistently making a six-figure salary. Right now, Coinbase Pro offers $25 for the same service, and Kraken’s is even lower at $5 .

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