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Why exchanges pause orders, and what should happen next
Nearly every swap service screens deposits, and nearly every horror story in this niche starts the same way: an order pauses, and then the service goes quiet or starts asking for documents to give the money back. The pause itself is normal. What happens next is what separates services worth using.
What actually triggers a pause
Screening looks at the funds, not the person: links to known thefts, sanctioned addresses, or patterns associated with illicit flows. A deposit can also stop an order for mundane reasons - it arrived late, the amount does not match, or the asset came on an unexpected network. In every case the honest design is the same: the order stops for a person to look, instead of executing blind.
The two fair outcomes
A paused order should end one of exactly two ways: the exchange completes, or the deposit goes back to a sender-controlled address minus the network fee. A service that invents a third outcome - funds parked indefinitely, or released only after identity documents - is converting a screening flag into leverage over your money.
The one real exception
If a formal request from the authorities names the specific funds in an order, the law itself holds them until the matter is resolved. That is true of every service on earth. The distinction to look for in a policy: a screening mark alone is data, not a command - it should end in a refund, with no documents asked. Our own policy states exactly that, in writing.
Questions to ask before you send
You can learn most of what matters from a service’s published pages before risking anything.
- Does the policy say, in plain words, what a refund requires - and is identity verification absent from that list?
- Is there a stated path and timeframe for refunds, or only a support inbox?
- Does the service publish anything falsifiable - order proofs, statistics, a track record - or only adjectives?