The issues facing Bitfinex continue to mount, with the exchange receiving numerous complaints from customers who have been waiting for days for withdrawals in a range of cryptocurrencies to process. The exchange says it’s been the subject of numerous distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks in recent days, and that network congestion has contributed to the challenges.
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Many Customers Are Complaining That Withdrawals Are Not Processing
Bitfinex Experiences Withdrawal DifficultiesWith Bitfinex’s subreddit increasingly being dominated by complaints from customers who have been waiting for withdrawals to process for multiple days, the company has issued an explanatory document seeking to clarify the reasons behind their failure to complete withdrawals.
The document, titled “Explanation”, states “Over the last few days, we were hit by a mixture of huge real customer demand for deposits & withdrawals, at the same time as we experienced DDoS in the form of malicious micro-deposits and withdrawals,” describing such as “a heavily funded attack.” The Bitfinex team adds that “both the Ethereum and Bitcoin networks were under high congestion,” asserting that both factors caused “a very large number of withdrawals to fail and be missed.”
The document claims that “new deposits and new withdrawals are now back to working fine,” adding that “all the withdrawals that failed during that period on the 4th-5th December need to be manually re-verified and added to a list for reprocessing.” The exchange claims that to have completed “maintenance” in order “to improve [their] systems meaning everything is now back to normal,” saying that “nearly every other exchange faced similar withdrawal issues during the same period, but due to the huge scale of customers, it is taking us longer to manually reprocess the failed withdrawals.”
Problems Persist Despite Bitfinex Claiming Operations Have Normalized
Bitfinex Experiences Withdrawal DifficultiesDespite the words of assurance, the comments on the document reveal many customers claiming that their withdrawals still have not been processing, with many Redditors alleging that their funds are yet to appear despite having received hundreds of confirmations on the blockchain. The company’s status page states that all systems are operational, and describes the investigation of the DDoS attack as having been resolved, exacerbating the concerns of customers who are still waiting for their funds to appear.
The withdrawal issues have compounded suspicions surrounding the operations of Bitfinex – with recent flash-crashes of over 90% on Bitfinex’s ETP and NEO markets, resulting in sudden liquidations, and the leaking of a shareholder report, re-invoking scrutiny pertaining to the relationship between Tether and Bitfinex. The exchange also launched what many see as a frivolous lawsuit against an anonymous twitter account called Bitfinexed – which has posted numerous accusations pertaining to Bitfinex’s operations.
