Lately, I’ve been trading cryptocurrency futures. While it can be quite a profitable activity, I’ve also run into a number of “non-trading” issues. For example, unjustified account freezes by crypto exchanges, having positive PnL wiped out, or simply dealing with scammy platforms that use all sorts of tricks to lure users in and make them deposit large sums.
LBank is part of a whole group of Chinese crypto exchanges. And one of the largest. What sets them apart?
- Lying about having licenses or operating with expired ones
- Fake order books when trading coins
- Your positive PnL can simply be wiped out
- Your account can be banned for no reason at all — and your funds won’t be returned
Just a few months ago, LBank was famous for the fact that its futures prices were tied to spot. And also for the fact that it had a “glitchy” market maker.
Because of this, it was possible to catch a moment when prices on it “hung” and it was possible to catch when prices for 1-2-3 minutes diverged from other exchanges by 2-4%.
These days, the issues with the market maker and price formation have been mostly resolved, and the number of account bans has decreased. So, let’s move on to analyzing the exchange.
Agregators:
The presence of an exchange in aggregators does not mean anything. But its absence is a sign to think.
- Coingecko – yes
- Coinmarket – yes
Availability of crypto reserves:
Yes.
Licenses:
Information from official site:
This is already a good sign. Let’s check them.
FinCEN:
License is real, it’s allow a
That is, this does not allow the crypto exchange to operate in the United States, since a separate license is needed for this. But this is already not bad.
AUSTRAC:
Fintrac (Canada)
Here you can see their old license, and the new one, valid until 04.30.2025. That is, at the moment it has expired.
Lithuania:
Company is registered
but does not have a license for crypto-activity.
It’s better than nothing. But the company lied about some of the licenses. It has expired licenses. And those that exist do not allow it to operate a crypto exchange to the fullest extent.
Reviews:
Lets check some of them:
Also they have active Google play and Appstore apps (this is a good sigh)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.superchain.lbankgoogle
and appstore app
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lbank-buy-bitcoin-crypto/id1437346368
They also have many reviews about freezing funds.
My experience:
During trading, my account was frozen.
After contacting support, I was told to go through C3 verification. (Recording a video with a piece of paper). After that, the account was frozen for 30 days.
After that, they allowed me to withdraw funds without any problems. But I was lucky.
In our private community, some people were less fortunate:
- Their entire positive PnL was wiped out
- Their accounts were blocked not for a month, but for a whole year or half-year
- All their requests were ignored for weeks — only after threatening to report to financial regulators did the exchanges unfrozen them
Conclusion:
You can trade if you avoid large positive PNL. And be prepared for freezing of funds and loss of positive PNL.