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5th October 2020, a crypto website Cryptowisser release an exchange list called Crypto exchange graveyard which shows almost all exchange and trading platforms that are gone scam in the note they didn't explain much except the platform's name, country, and when got scam.

But after one day they publish a press release on news.bitcoin.con and explain everything how and what causes platforms to go shutdown.


The interesting thing on the list was Hotbit.io (which are popular among users) they said it got scam but it still live and working well. I use Hotbit.io for trading and had about $17 worth of Chainlink but after seeing the list I withdrawal all.

The list started from 2020-10-05 to 2014-02-07. You can see some name from the list below that shutdown in 2020.

BOA Exchange, Voluntary Shutdown
Bitunio, Voluntary Shutdown
Hotbit, Scam
Krypto Connection, Just Disappeared
CashFinex, Just Disappeared
Instant Bitex, Voluntary Shutdown
TokenJar, Just Disappeared
Orderbook.io Voluntary Shutdown
Blockonix Voluntary Shutdown
NLexch, Government Shutdown
FEX, Scam
Token.Store, Voluntary Shutdown
OpenLedger DEX, Voluntary Shutdown
Coinfinit, Just Disappeared
CoinMex, Just Disappeared
Coinrate, Just Disappeared
Bitbox, Voluntary Shutdown

All list - https://www.cryptowisser.com/exchange-graveyard/
Press Release - https://news.bitcoin.com/cryptowisser-75-crypto-exchanges-dead-in-2020-more-will-follow/
In case you need - Best bitcoin anonymous wallets (https://www.cryptoswami.com/2020/08/best-bitcoin-crypto-ananymous-wallet.html).

Not your key not your coin is the common sentence while dealing with cryptocurrencies, but because of trading to be convenient, traders prefer to make use of exchanges, but, it will be good for them to have it in mind that so far they do no have private keys to coins on the exchange, it means the exchanges are the ones securing the coins for them, but most of the exchanges make use of hot wallet to keep funds of thousands or millions of people, that is why they are not safe to use. Some people also like new exchanges, which some can be scam exchange, using exchnages that have been existing for long and that have not been hacked before is better, but having your private keys to your coins is the best.

I have not heard of most of those platforms, but what are the criteria by which we can classify these platforms, and then we can say that it is a platform?
The digital currency market is decentralized and many platforms present themselves that they give solutions, but most of them have small market capacities and it is wrong to classify them or store money in them.
Few platforms have reached market capacities of a few million or billions.

There are exchanges that voluntarily shutdown though, I think they have allowed users to withdraw coins making them not really among the ones that gone scam. But those thats labeled MIA is the worse. There will be more in the future, maybe some will disappear too in the next bear market.


"Not your key not your coin" I'm sure doesn't apply to non custodial ones like the wallet projects which can connect to exchanges.

Not surprised at all, especially about Hotbit - they are wash trading from day One.

Making an exchange is the easy part. The hard part is providing liquidity and security...

It was expected result and there is not much surprise with this news if we know that most exchanges have fake volume, and if not total scam they are borderline scam for sure.
Looking at this list they say Hotbit exchange is dead, but that is not true, they are still working and washtrading everyday, and you can check that easy if you visit their website :)
Same thing apply for Finexbox exchange, they are still alive. Their website and twitter are working.

Still lot more exchanges to be closed due to no trading activity, most of the exchange still uses wash trading to give the fake trading volume to the users and cointracking websites are also still reporting them, newbies will understand once they entered into any of those exchanges with no trade orders to execute their trades.

Some exchanges got shutdown temporarily for hack and other reasons also should have a list though.

Like many here i am hearing about these names for the first time and it was expected that majority of the exchanges will die off eventually as the risk of maintenance is really high and off course some of these exchanges might be exit scam.

Only trade in reputable exchange and never go after unknown exchanges simply because they are providing huge offers as majority will end up as a scam.

Only heard a few names on those lists, but never traded, but I don't understand "regulations make it impossible" to new crypto exchanges to open. I mean, isn't it much better for them to follow regulations instead of just putting up a crypto exchanges? If there are regulations to follow then we can minimised the risk and lost per se. And then obviously competition, this is a cut-throat business so exchanges needs to find ways to stop on top of their game, like competitions etc. If those low to mid tier don't know how to advertisement, then it will simply die.

I'm not surprised seeing exchange like Hotbit.io on the list, I never liked them after I was focused to used their exchange as I could only offload one of the alts I got from working for a project on their exchange. They lacked proper customer service and only had mostly worthless coins listed on the platform. They probably wanted as many coins as possible for volume but this ended up costly them their reputations. I have see reports of discomfort from other previously customer online.

I think they also tried cashing on the IEO hyped and did various projects on their exchange but 99% of then failed. As for the other exchanges, I have never had about them. Some names actually sounds funny and I'll wonder who will go on to patronize them which could obviously contribute to their downfall. Lack of marketing.

With in next few months more DeFi related swapping exchange pumping up daily will also join the list which is way we're advice to abstain from patronizing most newly launched exchange until they prove their authenticity and don't store your funds on exchanges.

I do end up on some unknown or not really popular exchange when i do also need to sell off some alts in my bag too where i do end up on registering even if im hesitant to do so yet you wont know
if those will be just an another crypto-eating platform and wont really take back all of your coins once you had deposited.

On all of the list then i didnt really much known majority of them and its true that some of names do sounds funny and on why the heck they do end up with that
yet platform name is one of the important thing and of course marketing.(They failed on that one).

I wasnt just expecting that there are lots that are trying to get some market share but its no surprise that majority of them will fail and the best one will sustain or remain.

With the rise of Defi projects and exchange, this isn't a surprise to me that most of not well know CEX will shut down. Imagine, 34 exchanges have voluntarily shut down while others are disappearing without any explanation. I worried those people who leave their fund on these 75 exchanges that shutting down for sure others are leaving their altcoins there, (just like me when I want to sell my token at a high price, I usually leave on exchange and bid on a high price).

As I see the problems of regulated exchange are the continuous growth of hack and scam incidents, probably people realized this matter and they think that Defi is the answer. Possible that these exchanges didn't have enough customers and decided to voluntarily shut down.

Yes, but we cannot say that we will move out our token everytime we bought. Therefore, scalping is a bad strategy because we have to move our coins from exchange to their desired wallets. This only applies for long term hodler or swing traders. Yes, not your keys not your coins but I think the problem here is the security of every exchange. They are easily attacked by hackers which give away to their customers lost their funds. These exchanges who had been dead in 2020 are scam exchanges, that is why I trade only in CEX and popular ones.

I just heard about the Hotbit scam incidents and the rest is new to me, no doubt they wont stay longer in the market because they have no business here and they are just a scam project.

Choosing an exchange are very risky because we put our money to them so better to always deal with the top exchanges but never put big money to them, every exchange are vulnerable to the hackers. Expect more dead exchange because the top exchange are doing their best so they can attract and gain the trust of the traders, the competition with the exchanges are high.

I think is not true with hotbit become scam exchange, I know many trader complaint with transaction when withdrawing using hotbit exchange because take longer time. Hootbit process withdraw manually and we need more than one or two hours waiting for receiveing withdraw from Hotbit, I like this exchange because make unbelivaeble price with some coin when listing, did you remember last moment when listing FLM launchpad coin on their exchange with higher price, but basicly this coin have lower price just $1 after listing on Binance, how many people get profit and lost when seeing this coin list on hotbit with price above 1,5k$.

They are old but they don't make enough advertisement thats the reason why many people never heard about thier existence. That's also the reasons why they need to shutdown no traders ,no liquidity equals no income. The trend of exchange only started in 2017 and 2018 and many developer think it's easy to make money if they build thier own . they forget that they also need to make it popular so it will have users and maintain it by having many kind of promotion.

Yeah, fake volume building is a common trick exchanges use to make their users believe like the exchange is running at rapid pace and millions USD worth of coins are being traded every minute but the truth is that exchange is just waiting for the users to deposit big amount and then run away with all the deposited money.

We can only blame ourselves after such exit scams because when we have better options we shouldn't have used these fake exchanges and also never keep money in an exchange as wise people always say "never use an exchange as a wallet" because the coins for which the private key you hold are the only coins you actually hold and those on exchanges is still not your money unless you trade and withdraw it.

I have only heard and seen the three exchanges on the list. OpenLedger, Bitbox, and Hotbit. The latter has the most complaints that I've read.

It is not surprising to see exchanges getting close, the toughest and most popular will remain until it becomes oligarchy on the side of exchanges.

The reason all 75 exchanges and businesses died in 2020 is because most of the exchange sites are scamming as well as many new exchange sites are being added which are finally failing to make money soon after greed and leaving the market causing the exchange sites to become barren. There are also many exchange sites that have low reliability and risk for transactions. Many times the exchange is low due to the high amount of fees due to which the sites are getting lost day by day due to declining demand.

The amount of exchanges that dies constantly in crypto is nothing new, fall short of a major breakthrough in crypto exchange world the amount of exchanges that closes down will continue forever. There are few reasons for this, obviously there could be found a lot more but the main reasons are usually competition, bad development, hacking, greedy owners and lastly exit scams which are the most famous ones of course.

So, nobody is shocked that bitcoin exchanges gets closed down constantly, it is nothing new so there was really no need for a website like this. However we could use this as a cautionary tale to people not to use exchanges as wallets, if you are trading keep your money there and you will be happy about it, but if you are not trading take your money out for sure.

For the past two years we are experiencing a bear season and there is a big chance that it is the main reason why many exchanges  are starting to disappear or shutdown.
If their platform will not give them a profit then shutting it down will be their best option rather than keeping it and keep on losing some amount of money for maintenance
and etc. But in other cases, many exchanges are disappering like a bubble because they are created only just to scam the users or the investors.

security issues are still the number 1 reason for consumers...
many traders do not want to trade on unsafe exchanges, charge high fees, and do not have real liquidity. There have been many incidents where exchanges have made it very difficult for consumers, make consumers lazy to use that exchange.

Here are possible reasons why I think this happened:

1. The big boys have the lion share - For the past 3 years, only top exchanges like Binance, Okex, Bitmex, Kucoin (even with their recent hack incident) and a few others have been dominating the market and sucking up all the volumes. The small exchanges have to battle for what's left and most times, it's not much. These exchanges needs to earn fees to keep their exchange business running and no project is willing to get listed there except it's for free.

2. The ongoing pandemic: it's no longer news that covid-19 have heavily happened businesses and firms.  Even traditional companies have shutdown due to the impact of the pandemic.

I only know Hotbit and Bitbox from all the exchanges mentioned in the opening post. It's not easy to compete in the world of cryptocurrency,
Of course without a good promotional strategy it will be difficult to compete with popular exchanges. So it is only natural that many exchanges
have closed and disappeared, but many new exchanges have also emerged. So there must be natural selection, the strong will survive.

Those who voluntarily shutdown their exchange knows how the business works and know how to accept their failure instead of scamming the users. There’s a lot of scam exchange that is still running right now, and time will come they will exit the market and left many traders behind. There’s no surprise for this many list, scam projects are all over the market, hackers are also adding to the pressure of many exchange.

I have to say that they are done. There is no need to keep them in the market, in fact, many traders and investors haven't seen it.
In the market competition, only those exchanges that have a good market reputation and volume will grant to live for a long time/or might be forever. Besides, I haven't seen these exchanges OP to stay because they are already been dead since its creation, and most of them have been abandoned.

I expect more dead exchanges in the coming years if people never stop creating such a thing.

Hotbit (Cause of Death = Scam)

But visiting the exchange, it's still running and operating. Or maybe the dead means = no volume at all.

Actually, it's good that some of these platforms already closed their operation. It just means they can't withstand with the current competition. But still, looking at the whole, there is an advantage playing at small exchanges. It's just that most of them are risky to use.

and also there are still projects trying to list their coin in this exchange. anyway, hotbit's tagline -The World's Leading Cryptocurrency Trading Platform is not in anyway near to this claim. we will be seeing more on this list come this end of year.


and sadly not many exchanges will do this voluntarily. as much as possible they will rip off their traders before they exit without a trace.
 and dont be so trusting even the top 50 exchanges listed in cmc or coingecko, as anytime they can pull off an exit strategy. just dont leave your funds in exchanges. simple as that!

This means the competition in this industry is very high and also only few exchanges in the list which I’m very familiar and haven't tried trading any. In this industry, they have to be creative on how they could compete with other reputable exchanges. So it happens that some can't survive that turns out to be a dead exchange, and, only those can stay in this industry that has a great marketing strategy.

They don't need to be creative, actually. Only they must have to be consistent with what they say, would like to say that they promise high volume, that exactly what the traders have to look at. There's a lot of dead exchanges because they fail to give the desires of their traders and it comes to the point that they have been rejected.

The reality is that the future of these exchanges lies in the hand of the traders and investors, not from the developers itself. If the team can deliver the best, expecting more users to come and that is a big challenge for them, and they should have to do it in order to attract people otherwise, it all be done shortly.

If we are going with how many of them got cancelled or scammed people we are going to have a lot of trouble, however if you want to be happy about this, you could just how much of them actually made it work as well, just binance alone made a lot improvements and they have been working towards reaching a billion dollar company level, they bought CMC for 400 million dollars as reported so I am assuming they are already making a billion dollars in profit as well, or maybe they just gave in shares.

I still think that bitcoin world is new, I know it has been 10 years but I think in 10 more or even longer we are going to see so much improvements that it is not going to be remotely similar, its going to be something much better and bigger.

I have not heard about almost any of these exchanges but I heard about Hotbit for sure and though I never used it but I am quite sure it was quite popular among traders and I don't know the full story but feels sad if they actually scammed.

I always wonder why there are so many exchanges when there are trusted exchanges like Binance because really why would one want to trade on a new platform knowing that it might turn scam anytime and unless you are getting huge benefits as compared to a trusted exchange there is no reason to experiment with your money. Maybe just like different people shop on different e-commerce platforms similarly people do with crypto exchanges.

Anyone know Bgogo, an exchange that used to be invested in by a lot of large VCs but it didn't seem to be active for a year, only a few markets were traded by bots, and there was no news for the past 1 last year. I used to buy some of their BGGs and joined the IEO last year. But now it seems dead.

What I am wondering is they are still up and operating?

I found this medium article, and explained how hotbit scammed its users.
https://medium.com/@hotbitvictims/how-hotbit-exchange-scammed-its-users-bc07c518b42d

The problem with other traders, they are going to small-medium crypto exchanges because usually their rates are higher than the regular market price. And because they are attracted with possible profit, they don't know that it is just a trap to get their funds and most of the time there's no volume. So how can they trade if there's no liquidity? So it is really advisable to trust the top exchanges, at least you know that you can exchange your coins as soon as you want it to, not waiting for days just to go thru your order.

I didn't know about this project.

But most of the IEO projects that we have seen and launched from last year to this year, only a few of them remained strong.

And the others, as you have said, almost not active anymore.

Yes, this market changes every day, with the recent rise of Uniswap who knows what the future of centralized exchanges will look like, most recently Fud of OKEx. DEX is the future of exchanges and true to the idea of blockchain. Users are getting smarter, and they will only choose exchanges that are reputable enough to deposit their assets on it.

just sad to hear it, mostly i use of that exchanger u say. i using dex exchange like tokenJar or token store for arbitrage, well since we know exactly dex exchange isn't something most people are interested in , no wonder they shutting down. Orderbook also dex exchange as far i remember, but since they became the ICO bazaar sale , they ask KYC for trading and become hybird, then i just leave it. Openledger also , the dialy volume is really small. but well, at least we can see revolution of dex exchange by Uniswap.
well, about scam CEX exchange, nah, i wont commented.

This is the cycle of projects, no matter what kind of method they are using on their crowdsale. The dedicated and serious project will stay and the weak project will  be get rid off.

Keeping out on the least trusted exchange can make you feel better about the asset you are hodling, Of course the token is also an important factor. Always remember that never trade a token that is only listed of a single exchange and on top of that is the exchange quality. Always keep  that.

strange thing when i found hotbit mentioned as scam exchange. I have an account at there. But purpose is only to buy Nexo (since binance or bittrex nor poloniex still not listed this coin).
First time register in their exchanges was on August 2020 if i'm not wrong. Till now i have no issues regarding deposit (BTC & TRX) or withdraw nexo. Although, yes, their withdrawal fees are high (for me).
Register in hotbit coz coingecko give "decent score" for that exchanges.

Haven't heard or not even familiar with those exchanges that have been mentioned so more likely those are underrated exchanges or newly sprouts exchanges. I do not get it why people would get into such exchanges that do not have any popularity gained that can be potential to be scam exchanges and people do still engage on it when they could just get along engaging into well-known and reputable exchanges that are a lot more safe than those exchanges that have been mentioned. Beware of such unfamiliar exchanges before you decide engaging on it because it would be a regretful act once you got scammed for engaging into an exchange which you do not basically know. Instead of risking your funds into such, better get into a decent, well-known and reputable exchange than putting all that you have into a risk.

All those uniswaps and defi places could be as high as they can try, but none of them would ever reach the levels of binance, we are not talking about billions traded there only, which it is and they are still the largest by far, but we are talking about a company that is making more profits than most uniswaps have volume, we are talking about actually having more profits compared to total volume so it is not really comparable to each other at all.

So, you could hope for dex to get bigger and bigger, which they probably will get bigger when there is more money and people involved in the crypto world and that is inevitable, however one thing is for sure, we are going to see binance and those type of ones go up as well so the gpa will not be closed.

Hey OP,
I was confused for a moment cause you kept using the word 'got scam' and it was hard for me to understand what you were saying. Anywhere, I’ve got it now. I agree with them that regulations keeps pushing new exchanges out of the game, because they cannot cope with the harsh conditions that the government has created. It’s mainly the old big centralized exchanges that seems to be able to be coping with it.

Although some of the exchanges starts moving their businesses to other countries with a better system that suits them where it doesn’t have any effect on their business. Then competition is another thing, because being able to convince traders and gain their trust is a hard thing to do. When you don’t do it better other exchanges are taking your customers from you.

If I am being honest, I have only heard of Hotbit, I stopped using the exchange because of many unfriendly experiences and TokenJar , as for the others, I have never heard about them nor come across them which means their shutting down can likely be justified to a good extent. I believe for an exchange to survive it needs to be known hence having more users but if that is not applicable then its death is imminent. Also, looking at the so called exchanges, the most of the reasons for dying looks like exit scam, as in, how can an exchange "Just Disappeared" it means the team likely exited scam.
However, amidst all these unbecoming news about exchanges it is certainly wise never to keep funds on any of them since some can just disappear or get hacked. Furthermore, it's quite better to stick to top exchanges than most small exchanges that are highly  questionable.

I wonder are these exchanges that just disappeared have notified that they are closing down or shutting down before they disappeared if they have not notified their investors or traders then there's a possibility that they've scam their traders, this is one of the risk of trading in low exchanges there's a possibility of shutdown, better trade in popular exchanges to avoid this scenario.

There are a large number of exchanges which are and have not been that popular among traders. The fact that some of these are shutting down is not surprising to me because they have 'large shoes' to fill specially when Binance has been growing from strength to strength.
Many people are also skeptical when it comes to using new exchanges, and it is understandable when some people leave their money on exchanges.

In any way, looking at all of these listed exchanges I realise how uncommon they sound, and that's even with exclusion of the main dominators - I guess it just goes to show that there's so much competition...

Majority of the exchange you mentioned in the above is familiar in my sight to be honest speaking, probably only hotbit is the one I that was familiar to me but I never know that this is one of the exchange collapses now, just all I knew always are the top exchange in the market continued to give profit to everyone, that's it!

You must mean unfamiliar I am pretty sure because you later said that you are only familiar with hotbit.

I don't really understand and unable to digest how these new exchanges are able to attract traders when there are exchanges like Binance which are running since years and everyone recommends them. I really don't understand if these exchange offer something incredible or what because everyone has a common sense to use a trusted platform instead of a new exchange that isn't even running for 1 year.

I heard of hotbit from my friends who used to use it, so I have to ask them why they even used it now that they have been closed also if they lost any money although I hope they withdrew at the right time.

Many Exchanges have the highest probability of not falling into fraud, because they have everything in their hands, they see the supports and resistances and they can take advantage of it, the way they can fail is because they do wrong some type of programming or because they allow them to bots operate in your system, in addition to this, the little volume they can generate influences, if there are not many clients they must have very good market maker plans.

Same here but I heard a few of them actually although never used any of them and thankfully so after reading the OP.

That's because these new sprouts give various offers like low trading fees and no withdrawal fees or some other kinds of promotions like you trade for a week and we give out prizes to lucky winners. I get a lot of such offers on my email, I don't even know how they find my email ID but I simply ignore all these offers.

Experienced and serious traders never even lose money on these new ones, but inexperienced and new traders are the targets these exchanges focus and scam.