Seller is saying it’s from clean factory but I thought they got shut down, anyway just wanted to know if this was a shitter or super clone like he says, seller is local to me and asking for a lot.
Ah where to begin, first off I just wanted to say i've been in the crypto space for more than 10 years, been using exodus for more than 3 years, and have done hundreds if not thousands of transactions and swaps with Exodus as a hot wallet. I've never had an issue and have trusted them as a self custodial no KYC hot wallet until now.
Very old ex roommate of mine randomly asked me to purchase some crypto I convinced him to buy many years back, I sent him a zelle payment, he sent me the ETH. I swapped the funds from ETH to BTC (smaller amount, around $1300). I came back around 4 hours later and plugged in my ledger to my laptop which is where I store all of my crypto and while trying to transfer the BTC to my ledger, I noticed it was still swapping after 5 hours and I noticed a "Please contact us about this swap" message in the additional info section of the transaction.
I emailed support, and it turns out Exodus outsources swaps to third-party providers. Mine got routed to a shady russian off shore swap service (Simple.io) that immediately froze my funds and demanded KYC. After digging around, I found a ton of similar complaints about this provider, almost every story the same, people stuck in endless verification loops with no resolution. What I mean by that is nearly every single story about this swap service is the same, shady swap service freezes funds and requests KYC ----> victim of their service provides KYC ----> shady swap service stops responding, requests more KYC and documents, and almost always holds funds indefinitely.
Just wanted to say this was a huge blow as i've always enjoyed using exodus, enjoy their UI and their support but this is surely the last time I will ever use their service. I wanted to make this post because after many years of hearing stories like this, I thought it would never happen to me because I always thought the victims of these scams were not actual victims, but involved in financial crimes. For example I would read nightmare stories with people losing hundreds of thousands, if not millions through a swap with Changelly and I would think this person was almost certainly involved in some sort of financial crime. After experiencing this myself I am almost grateful it was a smaller amount of money but nonetheless i've learned my lesson. Beware when using Exodus Wallet, their integrity is compromised and we pay relatively higher fees using their wallet just for our funds to get potentially stolen!
I also want to add i'm almost sure i'm going to get some comment along the lines of, "But you agreed to use a third party swap service when swapping with Exodus blah blah blah"
When using a self-custodial, no KYC wallet, the reasonable expectation is that you retain control of your funds and aren’t subjected to surprise identity checks mid transaction. If a swap relies on a third party that can freeze funds and demand KYC, that risk should be made extremely clear before the user commits.. Not discovered after funds are already locked. Stay safe out there friends, goodbye Exodus.