Hotbit stops operation

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I'm one of the users who was not able to claim the assets remaining in the exchange, but it's not a big deal though, as those assets probably do not hold much value anymore. I just read the news, and I would have regretted it if I had a lot of coins because the deadline was already over. I was thinking that operating an exchange is profitable, but nowadays the competition in the market is really tight. Hotbit is not as big as Binance, and there were rumors before that they were faking their volume to lure traders to sign up for their exchange.

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[rat03gopoh]

I accidentally checked Hotbit telegram channel, and it turns out they're preparing to launch Hotbit 2.0 DEX version with 2 types of trading (Swap and Margin), currently in testnet stage and has a bug bounty program. The mainnet launch isn't yet known. https://t.me/Hotbit_English/3486469
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with Hotbit

[logfiles]

I accidentally checked Hotbit telegram channel, and it turns out they're preparing to launch Hotbit 2.0 DEX version with 2 types of trading (Swap and Margin), currently in testnet stage and has a bug bounty program. The mainnet launch isn't yet known. https://t.me/Hotbit_English/3486469
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with Hotbit

Though some members seem to disagree, to me this looks like a smooth scam operation. Tell customers that they are shutting down ---> Tell customers to withdraw all their funds ---> But then hike the withdrawal fees so some members just give up on withdrawing their assets ---> Shorten the withdrawal window ---> Keep former customer funds and relaunch as a "DEX" after a short time with no way of logging in as an old customer.

[Saint-loup]

If it's a true DEX they won't be able to scam people or at least pretty hardly because they won't hold their funds. I haven't been able to connect to it in order to test it but they seem to use Arbitrum for the moment and to accept Metamask, WalletConnect and Coinbase wallet, so it will certainly work as a common DEX. We definitely need more large and user friendly DEXs, I don't know if it will be one of them, but it's better than nothing at all.

docs : https://hotbit.gitbook.io/hotbit/

[logfiles]

We definitely need more large and user friendly DEXs, I don't know if it will be one of them, but it's better than nothing at all.

A CEX that locked up customer's money after a quick short notice of shutting down and now returning as a DEX promising a better service? No, thank you 
Why the quick U-turn?

[Saint-loup]

A CEX that locked up customer's money after a quick short notice of shutting down and now returning as a DEX promising a better service? No, thank you 
Why the quick U-turn?

Well a short notice is better than no notice at all. Usually exchanges only notice their users once they've closed markets and withdrawals and at best require KYC to customers in order to recover their funds. I've been able to withdraw my funds without KYC or any endless procedure, so I wouldn't say it's the worst closing experience I underwent, unfortunately. They certainly could do better but if they thought they had nastily scammed their customers I don't think they would come back with the same brand name and the same social media accounts, and they would leave open their customer service. Anyway I'm not very optimistic about the success of their DEX though.

[logfiles]

Well a short notice is better than no notice at all. Usually exchanges only notice their users once they've closed markets and withdrawals and at best require KYC to customers in order to recover their funds. I've been able to withdraw my funds without KYC or any endless procedure, so I wouldn't say it's the worst closing experience I underwent, unfortunately. They certainly could do better but if they thought they had nastily scammed their customers I don't think they would come back with the same brand name and the same social media accounts, and they would leave open their customer service. Anyway I'm not very optimistic about the success of their DEX though.

You were able to withdraw your money, but not everyone was lucky. You might have probably been one of the lucky few. If you get sometime, Just search through forums like reddit to get a clear picture of how many people lost their money

The best they could have done was to put accounts on withdraw mode only for some good time, like how localBitcoins or localcryptos did. That's how you gracefully shutdown a business.

Let me just show you a few examples

For anyone out of loop, HotBit is an exchange that closed down 17 days ago and has given its users one month grace period to withdraw their fund. Sounds like a "graceful" exit however, for their biggest asset USDT they've only enabled ERC20 withdraw and the withdraw fee is an astronomical 48 dollars which they claim it's affected by the network condition but last time I checked ERC20 transfer only costs around 1 dollar.

It's plain obvious they are attempting to steal money from users before finally going out of business. So far they've:

    Shut down support;

    Closed twitter replies;

    Deleted HotBit reddit;

    Disabled telegram comment.
    All intended to silence users. If you search HotBit on twitter you will also find hundreds of claim that HotBit embezzled their coins/tokens.

Just look through this recent reviews... This is not something faked or made up
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.hotbit.io?sort=recency

[sunsilk]

I accidentally checked Hotbit telegram channel, and it turns out they're preparing to launch Hotbit 2.0 DEX version with 2 types of trading (Swap and Margin), currently in testnet stage and has a bug bounty program. The mainnet launch isn't yet known. https://t.me/Hotbit_English/3486469
Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with Hotbit

After closing down, they're going to get into a 2.0 dex version? Hmmm, sounds fishy as it is and not a typical move from a cex moving to dex and if let's get into the example of being centralized. Something like this is unlikely to happen for real.

Scam or not, I'd never use a DEX that came from a closed down CEX operation. It's just odd for me although we've seen some P2P markets that have been announced their closure and came back alive again.

This is a little bit different from hotbit to having a 2.0 DEX. Anyway, we've got a lot of news all over this year about exchanges closing, maybe more by 2024.

[examplens]

A CEX that locked up customer's money after a quick short notice of shutting down and now returning as a DEX promising a better service? No, thank you 
Why the quick U-turn?

Well a short notice is better than no notice at all. Usually exchanges only notice their users once they've closed markets and withdrawals and at best require KYC to customers in order to recover their funds. I've been able to withdraw my funds without KYC or any endless procedure, so I wouldn't say it's the worst closing experience I underwent, unfortunately. They certainly could do better but if they thought they had nastily scammed their customers I don't think they would come back with the same brand name and the same social media accounts, and they would leave open their customer service. Anyway I'm not very optimistic about the success of their DEX though.

Here's my case, luckily it was a miserable amount, but still my money.
I had some tokens worth $10 there. In the regular withdrawal process, it would cost me part of those tokens and that would be max. $0.5. After their notice, I was curious to go through the process, so I went to clear that account, but the withdrawal of that token was disabled. I contacted support and they soon enabled the withdrawal, but this time the fee was around 50 USDT.
Now tell me that is fair and honourable behaviour.

I will definitely give them negative feedback everywhere, we don't need such petty swindlers

[logfiles]

Here's my case, luckily it was a miserable amount, but still my money.
I had some tokens worth $10 there. In the regular withdrawal process, it would cost me part of those tokens and that would be max. $0.5. After their notice, I was curious to go through the process, so I went to clear that account, but the withdrawal of that token was disabled. I contacted support and they soon enabled the withdrawal, but this time the fee was around 50 USDT.
Now tell me that is fair and honourable behaviour.

I will definitely give them negative feedback everywhere, we don't need such petty swindlers

It was not just you. I read somewhere that someone wanted to withdraw is 7million SHIB, but the withdrawal fee was 3 Million SHIB and as if that was not enough, the minimum withdrawal amount set by the Hotbit scammers was 8 Million SHIB... and no he couldn't trade it to USDT or BTC because by that time, even trading was disabled. So in simple terms he could not get SHIB out of the exchange even within the so-called withdrawal grace period.  

How can someone convince me that this was not a scam operation?