Phemex BTC & Derivatives Rugpull

[suzanne5223]

Phemex, a Bitcoin and crypto derivatives trading exchange platform based in Singapore, was launched in 2019 and owned by former executives from Morgan Stanley (an investment banking company) suspected of doing some rug pull.

If you have funds there it is advisable to withdraw it all now and this is one of the reason why you shouldn't use an exchange platform for holding huge funds.

Note : Not your keys not your coin.


Edit: The exchange was hacked and over $69.1M worth of cryptocurrency was stolen.

[UchihaSarada]

Phemex, a Bitcoin and crypto derivatives trading exchange platform based in Singapore, was launched in 2019 and owned by former executives from Morgan Stanley (an investment banking company) suspected of doing some rug pull.

These transactions are big and suspicious. It's not too surprising if it's actually a rug pull and Phemex exchange will join a club of dead exchanges, then appear in Exchange graveyard.

If you have funds there it is advisable to withdraw it all now and this is one of the reason why you shouldn't use an exchange platform for holding huge funds.

Note : Not your keys not your coin.

This warning is pinned, and raised again when a centralized exchange has problems with withdrawals, collapse, bankruptcy, scam exit, rug pull.

Reminder: do not keep your money in online accounts
How the SEC nearly destroyed my retirement account.
Not your Keys, Not your Coins.

[fikrett]

All that can be said is: "Another one bites the dust".

[headingnorth]

Bitcoin is not on the list of "suspicious outflows" from the link you posted, only altcoins.

[hyudien]

If you have funds there it is advisable to withdraw it all now and this is one of the reason why you shouldn't use an exchange platform for holding huge funds.

Note : Not your keys not your coin.

Now the withdrawal has been suspended, based on confirmation from Phemex at X. That means the user's funds will go through a fairly long process and there is no certainty when it can be reopened. This market seems to have a serious problem if there is indeed fraudulent actions from insiders. luckily I never had an account on that exchange, we'll see how far this case will impact the market price especially bitcoin.
Total assets by coin marketcap: $437,812,593.37
https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/phemex/

[crwth]

That is problematic when it comes to exchanges because you would never want to be in that type of Exchange where there are problems like that. Maybe they are just looking for a way to get money quickly, and that will be their loss just because they are cheating and taking advantage of their members.

I hope that no one gets wrecked with this end managed to get their funds away from that exchange.

[Jawhead999]

I don't use this exchange because they're at rank #92 by global, even though they've some promotions in this forum, but they're not yet trustworthy. Suspecting they're doing rug pull is too exaggerate, they would just withdraw their coins from cold storage instead.

Now the withdrawal has been suspended, based on confirmation from Phemex at X.

Total assets by coin marketcap: $437,812,593.37

Yeah this is the tweet.

To ensure security, withdrawals have been temporarily suspended while we conduct an emergency inspection and strengthen wallet services. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. Withdrawals will be restored soon.

Phemex and the development team apologize for the disruption. Our mission to provide a seamless and trusted trading environment remains firm. We are working on a compensation plan, which will be announced soon. Thank you for your understanding and continued support.

Our ongoing business operations are fine. Trading services continue as usual.

According to arkham intelligence, their assets are 4x times higher than coinmarketcap, it should be enough to recover the losses.

[Potato Chips]

Oh okay, it appears it's the typical hacking-- best to edit the title thread as well.

It is reported that nearly $30 million has been lost—I'm assuming there will be a final report of some sort from Phemex so perhaps it might change. Looking at their proof of reserves, looks like they'd be able to compensate folks in full. Let's just hope whole process will be smooth.

Phemex crypto exchange halted withdrawals after being alerted to nearly $30 million worth of suspicious outflows that raised alarms among blockchain security firms.

It's interesting that while reading articles about this. I come to know that aside from proof of reserves, they apparently have proof of solvency as well that covers their liabilities. Haven't looked into it thoroughly though. I'm assuming such information is nestled in their own proof of reserves page that I need to be logged in first.

[Mia Chloe]

Phemex, a Bitcoin and crypto derivatives trading exchange platform based in Singapore, was launched in 2019 and owned by former executives from Morgan Stanley (an investment banking company) suspected of doing some rug pull.

Like I always say and I think I won't stop saying, these kind of stories will always definitely come up from time to time. Wether Centralised exchanges or even the decentralised exchanges, they are still no good for hodling your coins Hodling coins is basically a concept of full ownership but for some reason , some group of people really don't seem to realise that.

If you have funds there it is advisable to withdraw it all now and this is one of the reason why you shouldn't use an exchange platform for holding huge funds.
Note : Not your keys not your coin.

Now here is definitely another problem to look out for because the situation may likely end up the way other exchange stories that went bankrupt usually end up. There's actually a high chance that sooner or later they stop processing withdrawals too.

[Dunamisx]

Phemex, a Bitcoin and crypto derivatives trading exchange platform based in Singapore, was launched in 2019 and owned by former executives from Morgan Stanley (an investment banking company) suspected of doing some rug pull.

If you have funds there it is advisable to withdraw it all now and this is one of the reason why you shouldn't use an exchange platform for holding huge funds.

Note : Not your keys not your coin.

Once the min whales are leaving the platform, its already a signal telling us something which they would have perceived from within their circle that led to them taking such decision, we have always been saying this, only leave a small amount of money you want to exchange for fiat with exchanges, don't make them your holder of the crypto assets you have, try as much as possible to see if you have avoided this risk by having a non custodial wallet, because once gone, its gone for life.

[SamReomo]

Thankfully, I'm not at that exchange and I have never joined it as far as I remember. Although, I have accounts at many exchanges but not at Phemex and if I recall correctly I haven't even thought about it before.

I mainly use Binance, Bingx, Bybit, Bitget, and a few other reputed exchanges but I don't store huge amounts because of security risk. I know as a trader I have to have funds to trade and that's why I do most of my trading at Binance and so far I haven't faced any issue with it.

[karel0001]

Good advice: not your keys, not your coins. If this is true, withdraw your funds ASAP and use a secure wallet. Exchanges are never 100% safe

[moneystery]

These transactions are big and suspicious. It's not too surprising if it's actually a rug pull and Phemex exchange will join a club of dead exchanges, then appear in Exchange graveyard.

looking at the list on the CEX graveyard page that is so long just shows how many CEXs have gone bankrupt/scammed their users.. and at the same time reminds us how risky CEXs are, and how users should be careful when storing their assets on CEXs.

if you want to plan to hold bitcoin for a longer period of time, then storing it in a non-custodial wallet is much better, because you can manage it yourself and don't have to worry that the platform where you store your assets will go bankrupt.

[suzanne5223]

If you have funds there it is advisable to withdraw it all now and this is one of the reason why you shouldn't use an exchange platform for holding huge funds.

Note : Not your keys not your coin.

Now the withdrawal has been suspended, based on confirmation from Phemex at X. That means the user's funds will go through a fairly long process and there is no certainty when it can be reopened.

Yes, the withdrawal was suspended to contain the exchange hack which led to the platform loss of at least $69.1M worth of cryptocurrency. However, the exchange withdrawals and deposits will be back online today. Footing the information provided by the current CEO.
In the meantime, I hope the exchange users get their correct amount of crypto back.

This market seems to have a serious problem if there is indeed fraudulent actions from insiders.

I don't understand what you mean by insiders but no full information about the cause of the accident is provide as we speak, and yes. News like always impact the market negatively.

[coolcoinz]

Yes, the withdrawal was suspended to contain the exchange hack which led to the platform loss of at least $69.1M worth of cryptocurrency. However, the exchange withdrawals and deposits will be back online today. Footing the information provided by the current CEO.
In the meantime, I hope the exchange users get their correct amount of crypto back.

That would explain why they were withdrawing shitcoins. Most likely some holes in protocols that were exploited. I knew a guy who was running an exchange in my country and he once told me that one of the biggest security risks is adding new shitcoins because each of them requires separate wallet software that you have to maintain and update. For this reason many cheaper coins were being merged together and held on the same online machine. It was too much of a hassle to keep every single coin in cold storage, especially if you were dealing with coins with combined deposits worth less than 0,1 % of total assets.
BTC was probably in cold wallet and the hackers were able to siphon out some cheap altcoins. Some of the listed coins have total 24h volume of less than 10m USD and value moved off exchange of just $10k.

[tabas]

I've heard them being hacked and whether they did a rugpull or not. The most important words we used to say about keeping money on any centralized exchange is that, we shouldn't. How many this kind of events are we going to look at before people will learn their lessons? Well, to us, we did learned already but this will take time for the others to understand that they should never keep their coins on these platforms.

[Lembo69]

It is better not to be included in such platforms! Would you ever want to throw your investment money in the water? Never! Rather, you expect to make a profit, if you exchange your money on such platforms without understanding the profit and loss and if you expect your money to be safe in such a wallet! Then I would say never.

[Darker45]

I hope this isn't a rug pull. If withdrawals are restored soon, deposits finally credited on users' accounts, and nobody lost a Satoshi, I think this is just another hack on exchanges. They're still communicating, openly admitting the attack, showing proof of reserves, and so on. Their CEO even announced that they took a snapshot for a distribution of rewards to users.

Let's see. If they suddenly go silent in the next days and nothing's restored, then it's fair to accuse them of rug pull. For now, it's just another day in the world of crypto. Sometimes, bad elements get ahead of a platform's security.

By the way, shouldn't this be an exchange or a service discussion topic?

[X-ray]

If you have funds there it is advisable to withdraw it all now and this is one of the reason why you shouldn't use an exchange platform for holding huge funds.

Note : Not your keys not your coin.

Now the withdrawal has been suspended, based on confirmation from Phemex at X. That means the user's funds will go through a fairly long process and there is no certainty when it can be reopened. This market seems to have a serious problem if there is indeed fraudulent actions from insiders. luckily I never had an account on that exchange, we'll see how far this case will impact the market price especially bitcoin.
Total assets by coin marketcap: $437,812,593.37
https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/phemex/

that was fast, hopefully it's just team securing the money from potential vulnerability otherwise it'd be a problem, this is why self custody is important folks, only use exchange when needed and then withdraw your money to your own wallet, or at least use exchange that has money to cover losses.
using low ranked exchange with low trading volume seems like a disaster waiting to happen these days, the hacker always targeted these small exchange maybe because the exchange spend less money for security due to lacking in revenue.

[therealmones]

Writing on the wall for Phemex more than likely as they have no regulations and no financially responsible people with access to your funds.

Any company that appears out the BLUE lol is usually anonymous and easily be seen as legitimate due to advance style landing pages, smoke and mirrors transparency and so much more misleading actions.

Setup fake acts of pretending to have being hacked or ransomed to be only pushing large amounts of crypt out while customer support began to vanish is all many need to see before theirs no more withdrawing ever.

Let along so many making that daring attempt to fund large amounts of crypto and now hits himself in the head because one day it vanishes in thin air.

We must learn if NO regulation then it’s a bucket shop waiting to strike rich and run.

There support team is currently vanishing with longer responses. The support team chat bot app has also been edited to not close out survey as they prevent clients from resubmitting new tickets via the app who are more than likely just checking on their deposits/withdrawals.


Instead of doing the right thing and that is refund those effected during the hack” and suspension, they rather remove the wallets you have balances so that you don’t realize they are running with your funds.

Getting hack is a pain in the but, but publicly promoting to your clients of backed funding for insurances while suspending withdrawals and not crediting deposits always in the fall sign of a exit scam in affect.

Sorry to say this. Lessons hard learned myself.