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The road ahead is long and has no ending; yet high and low I'll search with my will unbending. I have always believed that customer support and customer service are among the most overlooked and least seriously discussed topics in the cryptocurrency industry. Despite playing a quite important and indispensable role in the ecosystem, many people lack the attention it deserves. On the surface, it seems to be an immature or even chaotic area. To address this, I spent five months delving into the current issues facing customer support. To my surprise, many seemingly mismanaged situations are actually more a result of misunderstanding. Behind this seemingly chaotic and complaint-filled phenomenon lies a systematic logic that I will try to outline, hoping this article can serve as a reference for similar disputes in the future. The first category: PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair) Most of the time, the root of the problem is actually the users themselves. They transfer tokens to the wrong address or wrong network; enter passwords on fake websites; fall into scams that anyone could see through; and have no understanding of concepts like buying, selling, holding, soft forks, hard forks, airdrops, staking, etc. The most common reason for these complaints is also obvious: these problems have self-fulfilling characteristics. If users had known from the beginning that the responsibility did not lie with the platform, they would not have complained. But in the cryptocurrency industry, these problems are almost inevitable—every day, more than 250,000 new users create wallets and attempt transactions for the first time. No matter how many experienced users there are, more 'newbie babies' are joining every day. The second category: Smear Attacks / FUD Misinformation FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) was originally a negative competitive tactic among businesses to undermine a rival's reputation by spreading rumors. However, in the crypto space, FUD has evolved into a 'culture' where some community members actively attack projects or service providers, gradually forming what is known as 'Fudders'. The narrow definition of 'smear attacks' refers to organized, systematic FUD. From my observations, both forms exist in the industry. You can see many seemingly consistent and poorly crafted complaint documents, many of which are even generated in bulk using AI. The biggest characteristic? They are not concerned with solving the problem at all. They refuse to provide ticket numbers, do not seek customer service assistance, and only want to create noise. Their goal is not to resolve issues, but to attack. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is unlikely to disappear. The third category: Two Degrees of Separation The number of cases in this category is not large, but they are extremely complex, involving compliance processes like KYT (Know Your Transaction) and KYW (Know Your Wallet). All financial institutions must comply with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Counter-Terrorist Financing (CFT) regulations, and crypto platforms are no exception. This is also why platforms require KYC (Know Your Customer) verification when opening accounts. But KYC only proves you are not a wanted criminal and cannot ensure that your source of funds is necessarily legal. One of the benefits of blockchain technology is that almost all transaction records are public and transparent (except for privacy coins). Therefore, platforms usually check the deposit addresses and their historical transaction records. If they find that these assets come from known scams or attacks, the platform is obligated to freeze the deposits; if the issuing address is marked, it will also halt processing. This all sounds reasonable. But the next part is where it gets difficult. Money laundering is usually divided into three stages: placement, layering, and integration. Layering involves obscuring the source of funds through a series of complex transactions. Therefore, platforms must trace the flow of funds from the previous steps. For example, a user's wallet may be legitimate, but if the source of their funds comes from a hacker's wallet, then this user poses a significant risk. They could be an innocent intermediary or a conspirator. Since platforms cannot determine whether they are innocent, things become more complex. Users often say, 'Just tell me where the problem is, and I'll provide evidence.' But the reality is: 1. Most jurisdictions prohibit platforms from disclosing details of ongoing investigations, and some even prohibit informing users that they are under investigation. The reason is simple: to avoid 'alerting the enemy.' Once intelligence is leaked, suspects may flee, destroy evidence, or interfere with the investigation. Therefore, platforms usually can only respond with 'temporarily frozen for risk control reasons,' which is actually one of the most easily misunderstood areas. 2. Most platforms are not law enforcement agencies and have no interest in investigating or convicting. If there is insufficient evidence, they will unfreeze the assets; if evidence is sufficient, they will report it to regulatory authorities, and the platform does not act as a 'judge.' 3. More awkwardly, most users never check the source of their funds. They might produce legitimate reasons (e.g., 'This is the receipt for income from selling my PS5'), but that doesn't change the fact that the funds they received came from a wallet involved in a case. Two degrees of separation still carry high risks. Long-term interaction with suspicious wallets can even lead to the user's wallet being marked. These users are often truly innocent. They are at most being used. But this does not mean that platforms can ignore these risk signals. The fourth category: One Degree of Separation Although rare, I have witnessed it firsthand. Some 'victims' are actually the fraudsters or hackers themselves. After their funds are frozen, they pretend to be ordinary users and lodge complaints, even seeking help from KOLs or influencers to amplify their voices. KOLs, when expressing goodwill, may not realize they could be aiding criminals. Platforms, due to confidentiality regulations and anti-'alerting the enemy' considerations, usually cannot publicly respond to these cases. The fifth category: The Inevitability Under the Long Tail Theory This category is not a specific user group but rather an inevitable outcome of the entire industry scale. Imagine a platform with 10 million users, of which 10% are active each month, translating to 1 million people; among them, 1% will encounter issues requiring customer service assistance daily, resulting in 10,000 tickets; even if 95% of issues can be resolved immediately, there will still be 500 that require further processing; and if 10% of those users choose to complain publicly, that translates to 50 complaints daily. Seeing 50 negative comments each day may seem severe. But the fact is: 99.9995% of active users either use the platform smoothly or have resolved their issues. Consequences and Summary Summarizing the above situations shows that, aside from the first category, all other types of users have sufficient motivation to make their issues public. Platforms either choose not to respond due to strategic decisions or are legally prohibited from doing so. I deliberately use the term 'platform' rather than 'exchange' because these issues are not unique to any one institution but are common challenges across the entire industry. The conclusion is: customer support is always a thankless job. The ideal outcome is to silently resolve problems; the worst outcome is to be infinitely magnified and scrutinized online. Yet they are an indispensable part of the industry's maturation process, even if they often become the 'punching bag' on social media. I am not saying that all complaints are unreasonable. Education and technology can indeed prevent many issues from occurring. • Can response times be faster? Certainly. • Can AI systems improve diagnostic accuracy? Yes, they can. • Can users learn to reduce operational errors? Without a doubt, they can. But the prerequisite is that we must first understand the structural and regulatory limitations faced by customer support. They are not the enemy, but rather the ones shielding the platform from 'bullets' at critical moments. These issues may never be completely resolved. But understanding is the first step. I hope that after reading this article, we can have more understanding and empathy for the customer support team.