Hong Kong-based crypto exchange BitForex recently stopped withdrawals for customers. This crypto exchange made this decision without giving any reasons. And they stopped withdrawing money for at least three days. The exchange site has taken this decision without any prior warning or announcement. However, before this decision was taken, a huge amount of money was withdrawn from this exchange. About $56 million worth of crypto was withdrawn from the exchange's wallet the previous day. That's what on-chain sleuth ZachXBT claimed in an X post on the 23rd. He said the amount was withdrawn from three BitForex hot wallets before the shutdown.
Although they stated this through their X post but the important information is that the X account on the exchange has not been updated since mid last year. But currently users are facing this problem. As a result, many users reported their problems on the official Telegram channel of this Hong Kong-based exchange site and reported the issues to the authorities. About the reason they are facing such problem in their account. The dashboard doesn't show any assets other than not being able to access their accounts. Several users even shared a pop-up screen for that. Because all these users are blocked from accessing the company website.
This issue currently exists within the Exchange site and may remain for at least three days without prior warning. Even opening the BitForex website will face the same problem. While others have had similar issues, certain pages on the exchange's website have been deleted and those pages are still live. However, one such page went live on the last day of last month. Because at the end of last month, BitForex CEO Jason Luo has left the company. At that time the website was still live when this announcement was published. The announcement revealed that the Hong Kong-based exchange site was in a good position in September last year. BitForex in particular was among the top global crypto exchanges by capitalization. Its capitalization was quite good even its daily trading volume was very high. Its daily trading volume is around $2.6 billion in crypto. But one important thing is that CoinMarketCap currently no longer provides live data on BitForex.
But last year it was accused by Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA). The FSA accused BitForex of violating the country's fund settlement laws. FSA claims this exchange site is an unregistered exchange site. They alleged that the exchange was conducting business in the country without proper registration. Its impact was quite severe on this exchange site. Because the allegations have since attracted no significant attention from BitForex regulators or the media.
A huge amount was withdrawn last week. This huge amount was withdrawn by another exchange site in Hong Kong. Atom Asset Exchange (AAX) has raised this huge amount of money. They transferred approximately $55.6 million worth of ETH from their wallets to their accounts Even this Hong Kong based exchange site has stopped all its operations since the end of 2022. These events happened just two days after the FTX bankruptcy. They stopped their operations at that time. However, the CEO and board member of this exchange site were arrested by the Hong Kong police after the shutdown. Even after this incident, the founder of this exchange is absconding. However, his identity is still unknown. And he is accused of absconding with about 230 million Hong Kong dollars of money that is mainly used by users. They even have many allegations including that he is absconding with the private keys of users who have access to exchange wallets However, if you want to know more about this, you can read this news.