75 crypto exchanges have closed down so far in 2020

[Charles-Tim]

I was shocked as I read on crypto news that 75 crypto exchanges have closed down so far, in 2020 alone. And as we all know that the reasons why the exchanges will be closed down will be due to hacks or scams while some were reported to leave without unknown reasons. It is also known that not only exchanges that are disappearing, but altcoins too are included, almost 2,000 altcoins and tokens are no longer existing.
According to the Crypto Wisser Exchange Graveyard five of the exchanges were labelled as scams, and four including Altsbit, and Nerae, were flagged as being hacked. In total 31 were shut down voluntarily while 34 were labeled as ‘MIA’ for disappearing with no explanation. Dutch exchange NLexch, and Chilean Chilebit were the only two flagged as being shut down by their respective governments in 2020. There are some macro trends which help explain why so many smaller exchanges are failing. The growth of DeFi and the rise of decentralized exchanges in 2020 has put the final nail in the coffin for many smaller operations. Regulatory pressure has also increased since the early days of the industry and many exchanges simply haven’t been able to keep up with the requirements. Hacks and scams are also cited as growing issues for exchanges. Crypto exchanges are not the only entities disappearing however. According to the user-generated content site deadcoins.com there are almost 2,000 altcoins and tokens that no longer exist.

Crypto exchanges are disappearing at a fast rate this year.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/75-crypto-exchanges-have-closed-down-so-far-in-2020
With this news alone, we can draw out that many people have been scammed, and it is because they do not know much about bitcoin, altcoins, wallets and exchanges. Not your key not your coin is the rule, exchanges are often hacked, and there are many fake exchanges and wallets that are only owned by malicious actors, anyone that find such wallet or exchange will only be a victim of fraud and be scammed if deposited into such accounts, people just invest on altcoins and lost investment capital(s). Crypto is not what we can just start dealing with, we need to study and know about it very well in order not to be scam victim(s) like in pump and dump projects like in wolf of wall street, fake exchanges and fake wallets and through phishing and other scam means of defrauding people.

[OcTradism]

Exchanges have many types (don't clarify them as centralized or decentralized, peer-to-peer in this post).
- Legit exchanges
- Young exchanges
- Scam exchanges
- Global or national-restricted exchanges

Scam exchanges can be a new ones or old ones but owners decide to do scam exits.

National-restricted exchanges can be taken down by governments and some big exchanges adapt to avoid risks by split their exchanges from global to national smaller brand-exchanges, like Binance, Huobi, etc.

Some exchanges can get troubles if customers bring them to court for shady things like Wash volume or Cascade effects (months ago, Bitmex had a serious Cascade effects).

Other troubles are KYC requirements from governments, licenses.

[Charles-Tim]

...
Other troubles are KYC requirements from governments, licenses.

You are right, and despite the kyc for anti money laundering and counter-terrorism financing, this has not stopped exchanges to be hacked, there are exchanges that are hacked and closed down, and not able to refund customers funds, and no compensation in such a way nothing the governments will do.

How about the real scam exchanges also that having nothing to do but only one thing, to scam. People need to know more about cryptocurrencies  before starting to invest in it, and as for the centralized exchanges, they are not safe and secure by design, if cryptocurrencies can be hacked on the exchanges like the way we are seeing, how about data beaches that would have led to phishimg attacks that may not be disclosed.

No matter how successful the exchanges are, we should know that they are not safe by design, and should let us remember that not his key, not his coin.

[yazher]

This is happening every year because most of those exchanges are not real and only created to scam investors whenever they put some huge money on their exchanges and as someone who engages in this industry for years, I witnessed some of the exchanges that closed without even giving warning to their users. in other words, they disappeared with the cryptocurrencies deposited in their exchanges. Octaex probably one of those 75 they might just change the name of their site and replace some identical features of their past exchanges to completely fool the investors.

so far these are the only real exchanges that made an impact with their shutdown and there might still more.

Mt. Gox
Cryptsy
Crypto-Trade
Coin.mx
Bitcoin Market
Bitcoin Brasil
CoinEX
Crypto Rush
ComKort
Bitfloor
Bitcoinica
Coin-Swap
Virtex
Kapiton
Vault of Satoshi
Intersango
Bitomat
TradeHill

Source: https://igaming.org/cryptocurrencies/closed-down-bitcoin-exchanges/

[Rikafip]

Kucoin

Source: https://igaming.org/cryptocurrencies/closed-down-bitcoin-exchanges/

I know that Kucoin has been hacked recently, but this is the first news about them being shut down, I couldn't find their name in that article you shared. Care to share the source of that news about Kucoin?

From what I can see, they are slowly sorting stuff out and getting back at the business
https://www.google.com/amp/s/cointelegraph.com/news/hacked-crypto-exchange-kucoin-resumes-crypto-deposits-and-withdrawals/amp

Regarding the high amount of exchanges going down, that's not a surprise, considering the fact how bad and unreliable they are, with bunch of them being created only as a platform for various useless IEOs.

[Upgrade00]

people just invest on altcoins and lost investment capital(s).

This has been a trend over the years especially during the hype of ICOs. Investors were simply randomly selecting newly launched coins, putting their money in and expecting a huge ROI after a few months, this worked for a while, apparently, up until the hype died down. I say 'apparently', cause there were still fake and low performing projects during the hype period, but the noise of the hype likely drowned them out. When the hype died down eventually, lots of fake projects started to fail and new ones barely took of leading to huge losses for investors, shifting some of them out of the cryptocurrency space and others to Bitcoin.

I know that Kucoin has been hacked recently, but this is the first news about them being shut down, I couldn't find their name in that article you shared. Care to share the source of that news about Kucoin?

I can access their website pretty fine from my end, although I do not have an account, I do not think they are shut down. They also tweeted few minutes ago about resumption of deposits and withdrawals;

The Latest Updates about #KuCoin Security Incident:

BTC, ETH, USDT deposits and withdrawals have resumed
$MVP has completed the Token SWAP
Full services have now resumed for 70 projects

We will continuously update the progress: <insert link>

[LTU_btc]

75 looks like a really big number. I haven't checked whole list, but I think that almost all of these exchanges isn't known for us and they didn't had significant volume. It also depends how they went out of business. If they closed service like companies in civilised world are doing it and let customers to withdraw their funds, it's fine and completely normal thing. But another case is hacked exchanges and exit scams.
It's another warning why exchanges shouldn't be used as a wallet, but in many cases it was simply impossible to avoid loss of funds. If you're trading daily, you can't keep funds out of exchange and you need to have skme coins on your account.

Crypto exchanges are not the only entities disappearing however. According to the user-generated content site deadcoins.com there are almost 2,000 altcoins and tokens that no longer exist.

It's huge, but not surprising number, considering that basically everyone can have their own token now. And there was so many ICO's few years ago, but now most projects is dead and authors of it probably already wasted almost all money they got from investors.

so far these are the only real exchanges that made an impact with their shutdown and there might still more.
Kucoin

I also don't know why Kucoin is here. They'we been hacked, but they aren't out of business. I also miss BTC-E in the list, it was also quite significant exchange.

[yazher]

75 looks like a really big number. I haven't checked whole list, but I think that almost all of these exchanges isn't known for us and they didn't had significant volume. It also depends how they went out of business. If they closed service like companies in civilised world are doing it and let customers to withdraw their funds, it's fine and completely normal thing. But another case is hacked exchanges and exit scams.
It's another warning why exchanges shouldn't be used as a wallet, but in many cases it was simply impossible to avoid loss of funds. If you're trading daily, you can't keep funds out of exchange and you need to have skme coins on your account.

Crypto exchanges are not the only entities disappearing however. According to the user-generated content site deadcoins.com there are almost 2,000 altcoins and tokens that no longer exist.

It's huge, but not surprising number, considering that basically everyone can have their own token now. And there was so many ICO's few years ago, but now most projects is dead and authors of it probably already wasted almost all money they got from investors.

so far these are the only real exchanges that made an impact with their shutdown and there might still more.
Kucoin

I also don't know why Kucoin is here. They'we been hacked, but they aren't out of business. I also miss BTC-E in the list, it was also quite significant exchange.

I was making a list of the exchanges that got hacked but I decide I post the lists on the site that I found. then deleted my own list but forgot to delete kucoin. Sorry for mispost, it happens to me more often.

[hd49728]

The most shocking exchange shut down I've seen is BTC-e. It happened in July 2017 and caused a massive panic on BTC-e users for months.

Most common reasons often relate to dark markets, past hacks, money launderings and licenses.

The US Justice Dept attempted to close down BTC-e on the 26th of July 2017 when they charged Vinnik and BTC-e in a 21-count indictment for operating an alleged international money laundering scheme and allegedly laundering funds from the hack of Mt. Gox.

Criminal Case Against Failed WEX Crypto Exchange Points at Russian Law Enforcement
Hacked Exchanges since 2011. I can not find list of shutdown exchanges.

[stompix]

so far these are the only real exchanges that made an impact with their shutdown and there might still more.

You're missing BTC-E from that list which should be in the top rows, also others like Mintpal/Moolah, or smaller like Bitgrail or Gatecoin but who still had more impact than some on that list.

75 looks like a really big number. I haven't checked whole list, but I think that almost all of these exchanges isn't known for us and they didn't had significant volume.

Yeah, looks like much but it isn't, some of those were not even listed on Coinmarketcap and that list has 370 spot exchange alone, the last on the defunct list is BOA, never heard of it and no surprise there:

On the date of writing this review (14 October 2019), the liquidity at this exchange was a bit troubling. According to information on the exchange’s website, the 24 hour trading volume was only USD 75.

I think we can see some other 150 closings down (hopefully voluntarily and allowing customers to withdraw) without any problem.
Yeah, it's nice to have more options to trade, it's better for decentralization and to protect from manipulation but at least 66% of the exchanges out there are pure garbage and already involved in this kind of stuff.

[The Cryptovator]

It's really surprising to me, the amount of shutdown exchange is quite high. The problem is a few exchanges just skipped with the user's funds. This means they scam their traders. Those exchanges shutdown for a hacking reason, I am quite suspicious about them. Who knows the reality if they are doing just a hacking drama. On the other hand, when an exchange shutdown, then so many shitcoin will shut down at the same time. Lots of shitcoin have been trading on a single exchange. So, in the end

[Bitcoin577]

In recent time we are facing some very stick and serious policies which are forcing many exchanges to shut down their business as now mostly unable to sign members freely as they are facing laws and terms conditions which is also very helpful against money laundering and terrorist funding but this is really too much for crypto as they are trying to spread but still unable to bring some good solution for this all biggest problem is most of members want to live anonymous which is now very difficult for them with new laws from different regions.

[longlivecapitalism]

That's a staggering number of exchanges and altcoins that have stopped functioning but it can be explained because, aside from the scams, people who set out to create them usually don't anticipate how difficult it is to keep them alive. It takes not only a lot of time and quite a lot of money but there must also be a good idea behind the product you're trying to create or the service (because they're all products or services) since we're not in the early stages of crypto where there were like 10 exchanges and 200 cryptocurrencies. The competition is fierce now and people who want to create something in this field should be prepared for it.

[hatshepsut93]

A good reminder for newbies to never keep their coins on exchange, unless it's a small amount for trading, that they are ready to lose at any point. If even big exchanges get hacked or get closed by authorities, things are much more risky for smaller exchanges, so no matter how good it looks with some bonuses or lower trading fees or more shitcoin listings, it's always better to choose a bigger and more reputable exchange.

[ScamViruS]

This kind of thing happens every year so it is nothing new. In fact, these exchanges are made for bad purposes. They do the dirty work from the beginning and eventually run away with the investors' money. Most of the exchanges that have been shut down are unknown. So everyone should learn from this, never put coins in the exchange, any time a big accident can happen. And it is very important to be careful when choosing an exchange to trade.

[AakZaki]

75 exchanges closed is a sizeable number so far. But some of the exchanges on the list are not familiar to me and I only know Mt.Gox. However, kucoin is not a closed exchange, although it has recently come under attack and lost many altcoins with hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.
One of the exchanges that was closed due to hacking was cryptopia.co.nz which hurt a lot of people.