BitForex halts withdrawals, stops responding to users after $56.M was moved

[Amphenomenon]

ZachXBT posted 2 days ago on Twitter(X), that February 23 a suspicious activity occurred on bitforex exchange were of 3 of their hot wallet address saw outflows of ~$56.5M and after which withdrawal was halted without any announcement from the exchange even till now.

In September 2023, BitForex was among the leading global crypto exchanges in terms of capitalization. Its daily trading volume stood at about $2.6 billion in crypto. At present, CoinMarketCap doesn’t provide live data on BitForex.

In April 2023, Japan’s Financial Services Agency (FSA) accused BitForex of violating the country’s fund settlement laws. According to the FSA, the exchange had been conducting business in the country without proper registration.

However, since then, BitForex hasn’t drawn any significant attention from regulators or the media.

Last week, another Hong Kong exchange, Atom Asset Exchange (AAX), moved around $55.6 million worth of Ether from its wallets. AAX stopped all its operations on Nov. 13, 2022, just two days after FTX filed for bankruptcy. Following its shutdown, AAX’s former CEO Thor Chan and board member Haoming Liang were arrested by Hong Kong police in 2022.

However, the founder of AAX, whose identity remains unknown, is allegedly still on the run with 230 million Hong Kong dollars ($29.41 million) worth of users’ money and private keys holding access to exchange wallets.

Customers don't really know if this was an hack or exist scam since the CEO recently stepped down a month ago. While most of the pages of the website are currently down except from some parts like the announcement of the stepping down of the CEO and so many customers have not been able to access their assets.
BitForex Twitter(X) account has not been updated since May last year but customers were able to communicate with them before from their official Telegram channel but still yet no response from the exchange there till now.

Thank God majority of cryptocurrency investors have been able to know the essence of not your key not your coin but it's still painful when naive people fall victim of these exchanges, we can see that BitForex was among the top exchanges last year base on market capitalization which shows trustworthiness but trusting CEX tends to end with regret.

https://twitter.com/zachxbt/status/1762028433574650347
https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-exchange-bitforex-halts-withdrawals

[Ruttoshi]

It is no more a strange news to me, when I see the collapse of an exchange, because I have always seen them as people that can get hack anytime or pull an exit scam, so I know that anything can happen to them at anytime. This is why everyone into bitcoin should never leave their coins in any kind of exchange, no matter its reputation, because your coins can never be safe in their custody.

We have seen and heard of big exchanges crashing, and people are still ignorant of using a self custody wallet, but they think that it is very easy to trade your coins at anytime so therefore the exchanges are the best place for them to leave their coins. It is better to learn from people's mistake than learning in a hard way.

[SamReomo]

It's really a bad news for those people who hold they money at that exchange. It's not safe to keep your Bitcoin or any other altcoin at exchanges. If you have a coin in small amount and you're a trader then its okay to trust a good exchange but still it's not recommended.

Those exchanges can run away with your money or get hacked sometime. In past we have seen a few more exchanges getting hacked and a few of them being rug-pulls. I believe one is a trader then he/she should go with a top level exchanges instead of going to low reputed exchanges.

[Coin_trader]

AFAIK Bitforex is one the CEX that volume is excluded before on different price aggregator website like CMC and Coingecko due to its malicious wash trading for the sake of pumping their daily trading volume.

This CEX too is home for scam shitcoins so I’m not surprised that they start exiting now while the market is booming since most of the tokens from their customers that they are holding are on huge value increase. They knew that they can’t compete long term on giant exchange like Binance that dominate the market.

This kind of tragic news will be avoided by affected users if they always practice Not Your Key Not Your Coins slogan of Bitcointalk forum.

[hopenotlate]

In recent years regulatory oversight has intensified and global authorities are tightening their grip on the cryptocurrency environment , I guess this sudden closure is the result of this trend and also of their last accusation of operating in Japan without a proper license.
But it must be said Bitforex reputation has never been too crystal clear : in the past years there were allegations about the veracity of their trading volume data opening the field to a supposed manipulation of numbers .
Anyway site going offline without any announcement,  withdrawals suspended and those huge sums moved from cold wallets :I 'd say three clues make an evidence, I don't think we will ever see them back.

It is certainly not a good feeling for those who have funds on the site to find themselves faced with this welcome

[Dunamisx]

ZachXBT posted 2 days ago on Twitter(X), that February 23 a suspicious activity occurred on bitforex exchange were of 3 of their hot wallet address saw outflows of ~$56.5M and after which withdrawal was halted without any announcement from the exchange even till now.

Things like this cannot end or cease to happen when we are having the absence of information that could guide and prevent us from the use of these exchange, this has to start with the implication we have with the use of a centralized exchange, which many don't know, the moment they have any shady experience with them is when you will see them coming out to report on their ordeal, many of these are currently happening with more other exchanges, just avoid using them if you want to be free of their panic and stress.

[Husires]

ZachXBT posted 2 days ago on Twitter(X), that February 23 a suspicious activity occurred on bitforex exchange were of 3 of their hot wallet address saw outflows of ~$56.5M and after which withdrawal was halted without any announcement from the exchange even till now.

Thank God majority of cryptocurrency investors have been able to know the essence of not your key not your coin but it's still painful when naive people fall victim of these exchanges, we can see that BitForex was among the top exchanges last year base on market capitalization which shows trustworthiness but trusting CEX tends to end with regret.

If the daily trading volumes was 2.6 billion and bitforex takes 0.5% of these volumes as profits, then they can generate 1 million per day or 69M per 2 months, why exit scam and they can generate this profit easily.

If these statistics are not correct and the $56 million is clients’ money, then leaving such amounts in unknown CEX means that traders do not really understand, not your key, not your coin.

[alastantiger]

ZachXBT posted 2 days ago on Twitter(X), that February 23 a suspicious activity occurred on bitforex exchange were of 3 of their hot wallet address saw outflows of ~$56.5M and after which withdrawal was halted without any announcement from the exchange even till now.

Thank God majority of cryptocurrency investors have been able to know the essence of not your key not your coin but it's still painful when naive people fall victim of these exchanges, we can see that BitForex was among the top exchanges last year base on market capitalization which shows trustworthiness but trusting CEX tends to end with regret.

Silence is golden but silence here in the case of Bitforex is highly suspicious. Who would believe them when they are back up with whatever announcement they have to make. A big leaning point is that no matter the ranking of an exchange on coinmarketcap.com, their market capitalization, trading volume, circulating supply, do not trust them. I can't imagine what those who put their coins there are going through currently. ,It is good to do your due diligence before getting into project like you never know what's going to happen. Better still, this won't happen if you take control of your own crypto that's why the term not your keys not your coins. To have the ability to protect your own stuff, to hold your own assets instead of putting your assets at unnecessary risk.

[Charles-Tim]

A topic has been created by OmegaStarScream two days ago regarding this on exchanges board. Before creating this type of topic that belong to exchanges, try and search for similar topic on exchanges board or use the search engine for it.

Bitforex.com goes offline after 55 million withdrawal

[hd49728]

Centralized exchanges, online platforms are not your friends and not trusted custodians for your bitcoin. If you have bitcoin, store it in your non custodial wallet, be your own custodian, be your own bank.

People learned hard lessons in 2022 with Terra, Celsius, Voyager, Three Arrows Capital, BlockFi, FTX and paid expensive costs.

This accident is another warning that "Don't repeat their mistakes in future. "

Reminder: do not keep your money in online accounts.

[yazher]

We have seen and heard of big exchanges crashing, and people are still ignorant of using a self custody wallet, but they think that it is very easy to trade your coins at anytime so therefore the exchanges are the best place for them to leave their coins. It is better to learn from people's mistake than learning in a hard way.

This is sad, but this is true every year we always witness such incidents and they have their own similar reasons which as hacking incidents which all know it was just made up and not true. After they fail to operate their exchanges or they have faced too much trouble on their platforms, they always quit and make such drama before they close their exchanges. And this is really bad for those investors and their users who trusted them and now they are being ignored and don't have any assurance whether they can take their crypto back or not.

[Amphenomenon]

ZachXBT posted 2 days ago on Twitter(X), that February 23 a suspicious activity occurred on bitforex exchange were of 3 of their hot wallet address saw outflows of ~$56.5M and after which withdrawal was halted without any announcement from the exchange even till now.

Thank God majority of cryptocurrency investors have been able to know the essence of not your key not your coin but it's still painful when naive people fall victim of these exchanges, we can see that BitForex was among the top exchanges last year base on market capitalization which shows trustworthiness but trusting CEX tends to end with regret.

If the daily trading volumes was 2.6 billion and bitforex takes 0.5% of these volumes as profits, then they can generate 1 million per day or 69M per 2 months, why exit scam and they can generate this profit easily.

If these statistics are not correct and the $56 million is clients’ money, then leaving such amounts in unknown CEX means that traders do not really understand, not your key, not your coin.

Base on Coin_trader reply i can say, the $2.6 billion was all fake because  base on your analysis they would definitely being earning more rather opting for this scam except they have more of customer funds greater than the $56 million but base on ZachXBT  on X, Bitforex holds 18% of the $TRB supply and 7% of the $OMI supply, which is a proof thousands of investors still trust CEX even after 2022 CEX crisis

A topic has been created by OmegaStarScream two days ago regarding this on exchanges board. Before creating this type of topic that belong to exchanges, try and search for similar topic on exchanges board or use the search engine for it.

Bitforex.com goes offline after 55 million withdrawal

I actually did that but I guess my search method was bad, next time will stick to ninjastic space since it result would be arrange by most recent while i failed to also notice earlier that I could change the sorting method from most relevant to recent date on the Google Search

[icalical]

Is Bitforex quite popular? because I have never even heard of BitForex previously, and I have known some not so popular centralized exchange like Bitmex and Mercatox. And I just tried to open it without VPN, and the site is banned by my provider (not blocked by cloudfare because I was redirected to the provider block sites). My provider only block porn and/or malicious sites, related to fraud or scam so BitForex might have been flagged and considered dangerous for a while. Sometimes I glad that my ISP block those kind of site, but it also annoying because it also block many other neutral sites like Reddit.

[ImThour]

I have never heard of BitForex. I mean Bit + Forex? that sounds too clumsy to me to be very honest. Why would you deposit your funds in an exchange that isn't sure if they are into Crypto or Forex. And it's completely a rip off of Bitmex. I know that exchange however that might also be just another "working" exchange which will disappear in some years. IDK how they survived the 2022 bear market.

[Kelward]

This news doesn't come as a surprise to me, because right from my newbie days in the crypto space, many experienced people have been warning me about trusting centralized exchanges, that keeping your coins in them is very risky. Although I wasn't familiar with this bitforex exchange, it definitely had a good reputation with it's customers, now they can't access their funds, so this goes to proof again that we shouldn't trust any exchange, no matter how big they are and the reputations that they've attained. We don't even know if the exchange was hacked or if it was an inside scam, but the evergreen lesson to learn from this incident is to always remember that "not your keys, not your coins", it's best to keep your coins in your none custodial wallet.

[Troytech]

Is Bitforex quite popular? because I have never even heard of BitForex previously, and I have known some not so popular centralized exchange like Bitmex and Mercatox. And I just tried to open it without VPN, and the site is banned by my provider (not blocked by cloudfare because I was redirected to the provider block sites). My provider only block porn and/or malicious sites, related to fraud or scam so BitForex might have been flagged and considered dangerous for a while. Sometimes I glad that my ISP block those kind of site, but it also annoying because it also block many other neutral sites like Reddit.

At times isp block could block many neutral sites but I guess it's based on your settings.

I've never heard of bitforex before and I wonder why people still store their asset in offline exchanges , I guess this person's are under educated about how to keep their assets secure, if you stay long enough in this space news like this never fade cause many people don't know about the empowerment of Bitcoin and how you can have total control over your asset and properly secure it. Online exchanges are target for scammers and the risk involved with you losing your asset any day is tok high, they can freeze your asset and you won't say anything about it. I guess the idea of Bitcoin was decentralization but people prefer centralization so much that they don't want to get any knowledge to know how to do things fro themselves.

[KiaKia]

Be prepared, this is just the beginning, before we see a new all time high for Bitcoin and even after, many bad things will happen, it's already starting as we speak.

Two good altcoin projects was attacked and drained of their funds days ago, one is serenity shield, a project that was meant to protect users, they already lose credibility,  and they have been in work since 2020 just for this project only, now it's complete joke.

Another one is Shido, a layer 2 project that was once attacked some time ago and they are on their mainnet now only to get drained again, now they are struggling to win their fans back, two losses in a role? Enough to keep investors in checked? I don't think so.

Just so you know, attacks are been carried out on projects and even crypto exchanges, now isn't the best time to keep your favorite coins on any crypto exchanges, it's bitforex turn today, it will be another tomorrow, move your funds out of any small or big exchanges.

[martinex]

Yes. I also created my trading account on BitForex, even though there were only a few assets there, using it was a bit troublesome, I always had to re-login by entering the 2fa code again, in the end I decided to move to another exchange. For this case, it is indeed an observant user who is able to read it (big draw). For ordinary users, their activity is only temporary trading and they only do WD using the exchange.

[Cookdata]

This news doesn't come as a surprise to me, because right from my newbie days in the crypto space, many experienced people have been warning me about trusting centralized exchanges, that keeping your coins in them is very risky. Although I wasn't familiar with this bitforex exchange, it definitely had a good reputation with it's customers, now they can't access their funds, so this goes to proof again that we shouldn't trust any exchange, no matter how big they are and the reputations that they've attained. We don't even know if the exchange was hacked or if it was an inside scam, but the evergreen lesson to learn from this incident is to always remember that "not your keys, not your coins", it's best to keep your coins in your none custodial wallet.

You aren't a victim and that's because you reas and listen, there many of them that have this information but they don't bother. I feel like the trust on centralized exchanges are far even more than what it used to be in the past. Ask a new person that want to introduce another friend to crypto, ask him how is going to ask and you will get the normal response of getting register on Binance, verify your account and then fund your wallet with usdt from p2p to bet started and this is how the ignorant cycle of crypto learning continue.

Doing KYC is never a good thing, it has more disadvantages than the merits but even at that people do it and as if that is not enough, coins bought that are meant to be watch in external wallet as their own custody, they live it in the centralized exchanges and yet they don't trade, they just prefer to see their coins on the centralized exchanges and when something like this happens, they cry for help and nothing can be done.

[DubemIfedigbo001]

It is no more a strange news to me, when I see the collapse of an exchange, because I have always seen them as people that can get hack anytime or pull an exit scam, so I know that anything can happen to them at anytime. This is why everyone into bitcoin should never leave their coins in any kind of exchange, no matter its reputation, because your coins can never be safe in their custody.

We have seen and heard of big exchanges crashing, and people are still ignorant of using a self custody wallet, but they think that it is very easy to trade your coins at anytime so therefore the exchanges are the best place for them to leave their coins. It is better to learn from people's mistake than learning in a hard way.

Exactly, having your funds in an exchange is just like giving somebody your money to good for you. The possibility of not getting the money back is there ass the person has total control over your money. The campaign of not your key, not your coin is being taken likely by ignorant people and they pay heavily for that when exchanged has issues.

Personally, I'm not expecting much from anything that I'm not the custodian and that validates the use of self custody wallets over CEX wallets. Another possible shutdown and most people would still not learn. Seems people loves learning the hard way anyways.