Several users of Vice City are taking to the Dread forum to report problems with the market, ranging from not being able to log in to not receiving withdrawals, to not having support tickets answered. While issues with the market have mounted steadily over the last few months, the site has remained online and operational for most — until now.
Murmurings of an exit scam by the market have persisted for nearly four months prior to this latest round of problems, which appear to confirm what many had already suspected.
One longtime vendor on Vice City reported on Dread yesterday that they had not received a withdrawal submitted for processing over 72 hours beforehand, noting that “usually it arrives within 24 hours.” They also said they had not been able to get in touch with support on the market or on Dread, noting that they had “spoken to multiple people experiencing the same issue.”
Vice City was reachable as of Monday morning although deposits are currently disabled.
Reports of withdrawals not being processed first started coming into Dread on April 13th. The situation has since snowballed into dozens of similar complaints lodged on the forum and elsewhere. Other problems reported include private mirrors no longer working, deposits and withdrawals being disabled, not being able to get past the main URL captcha, PGP verification problems, and the market’s 2-FA login system no longer functioning.
“Made some changes on our listings few days ago and been pending ever since,” reported vendor CanadianLegend in the Vice City subdread, adding that they got no reply to their support ticket, and that a withdrawal attempt failed with a message stating “there are Tor Connection problems.”
As of the writing of the article, Vice City could be accessed and appeared to operate mostly as normal. However, clicking on an account BTC balance revealed deposits are “temporarily unavailable,” with no available explanation from market admins or staff regarding the issue.
Vice City launched in May 2020 and achieved a fair degree of popularity in its almost three years in existence. It has not operated without controversy, however. The market has suffered a fair amount of downtime and connectivity issues, with basic features often out of service and support sometimes taking weeks to follow up on requests or complaints. Thus, the past behavior of Vice City administration suggests its current problems may only be temporary. Regardless, customers are warned against using the market until recent complaints about withdrawals have been resolved.