https://medium.com/crypt-bytes-tech/whats-up-with-btc-e-is-it-exit-scam-2de2952ec7d
Background
It all started with the tweet in Russian where the site tweeted “Due to the data center of btc-e may be temporarily unavailable #btce”. Its been 19 hours now that the site is still down. Going by the earlier instances its not new, they have been down for scheduled maintenance.
And going by the comments in the social media, the feedback of the exchange has been mixed.
On Social Media
Some earlier instances of them being in controversies is given below.
On 6th Apr 2017 they had faced a DDOS attack though their API was working and also Cloudflair DDOS protection was enabled but still they were able to recover.
On 5 Jun 2015 they had gone down and sent below tweet to notify it.
While there were many who commented on BTCE on not giving the ETA, there was also statement of a possible hack.
In the reddit discussions there were many who were supportive but many who also were angry about the way the exchange went down, and even worse they also implied to a possible hack.
“oooooooh there have been a lot of issues with BTC-E
They release cryptic news updates that are never investigated. They too jumped on the transaction malleability bandwagon in February 2014
They’ve manipulated their altcoin markets with bogus delisting and relisting announcements
They’ve taken bribes for listing altcoins
shit, what else?
BTC-E used to be THE go-to place to scam and be scammed. Bitcoin early 2013 and before, dark times. The shit today doesn’t light a candle.”
Also many complained about the cryptic messages that they posted about their un-scheduled maintenance. But during this period the website was back within just 5–6 hour window.
During 2013 and 2014, BTC-e had many outages related to Distributed Denial of Service attacks.[7] They later began using the reverse proxy service CloudFlare to help mitigate these attacks, reducing downtime for the exchange.
3 years back in this this reddit post there were allegations of Money Laundering and also their easy way of anonymously buying cryptos meant people dumping their drug money in their exchange for cryptos. How ever there were many who supported the anonymous way of buying crypto currencies without getting through the hassels and issues of KYC.
And this reddit post complained about the lack of support from BTC-e and also felt harassed at not being able to withdraw their money from the exchange. Even people has to post in bitcoin talk and reddit and other platforms to get their attention.
And then finally this reddit post as to how they did not follow any AML/KYC and its an open secret that many coins that result from hacking and darknet market sales are laundered through there. And also the operators of the exchange are completely anonymous and eventually when the risks of running the exchange are too high, they will be incentivized to run with the coins.
And still the exchange had been running for quite long and had been one of the first generation exchanges where still one can go and trade coins.
Current Situation
Even till july 24th they were updating on features added to Btc-e as form the below tweet.
But the first message came in yesterday:
And one of the comments stated of a possible DDOS:
But still 13 hours back their only update was:
And there have been no updates since then.
Going by the number of comments, the anxiety levels have increased and there is a point of concern.
In the below tweets there was also allegations of the a huge spike in BTC trade implying BTC from BTC-e getting dumped.