A curious, though sad for one of its users, story has unfolded on the Bitcointalk forum. A user with the nickname XLXer reported that the crypto exchanger GhostSwap blocked his funds amounting to 20.5 ETH (Exchange ID: r6gfns7qebjs43e4).

According to XLXer, on May 24, 2026, he transferred about 88.9 ETH through the bridge aggregator Jumper.xyz to his new addresses and made four consecutive exchanges on GhostSwap. The irony, in his opinion, is that three of the four transactions went through successfully, and only the third one was blocked. The author rightly notes: if the source had been "dirty" the AML system would have triggered on all four transactions, and if it had been clean — on none of them. Such selective blocking looks more like a deliberate seizure of funds than a legitimate check.

In the comments, users quickly rubbed the author's nose in his main mistake — the lack of proper due diligence on the service. According to user Slow death, if the author had googled reviews, he would have found plenty of complaints about GhostSwap. User mabji1 was even more categorical, stating that "HitBTC = GhostSwap".

The situation was clarified by an experienced forum member. According to user examplens, sending multiple transactions from a single source often raises suspicion with AML systems. He even linked the author's addresses to Tornado Cash, although XLXer himself stated that he had never used Tornado Cash.

The very essence of the problem was revealed thanks to users FinneysTrueVision and examplens. As it turned out, GhostSwap is not fully independent — it uses the centralized exchange HitBTC as its liquidity provider. According to user examplens, GhostSwap has several accounts on HitBTC registered under straw men. When funds on one of the accounts get blocked upon receiving the third transaction, the service simply switches to the next account to process the fourth. That's exactly why the blocking looks "selective".

Because of this dependence on a centralized exchange, as user XLXer notes, GhostSwap was forced to change its slogan from "NO KYC" to "Privacy-Focused Crypto Swaps". Their partner OrangeFren, for its part, added a warning to its website that GhostSwap may request KYC, openly acknowledging the problem.

The author of the post now doubts whether to go through verification, as he had hoped to resolve the conflict amicably. This story is an excellent reminder: services promising privacy without KYC often actually depend on large centralized exchanges that can freeze your money at any moment. Always check the reputation of a platform and test it with small amounts before trusting it with large capital.