The exchange, whose founder and CEO resigned three weeks ago, has gone completely dark as bitcoin surges toward its November 2021 all-time high of $69,000.
Offshore cryptocurrency exchange BitForex ceased operations over the weekend, leaving six million of its users in the dark after a promised change in leadership fell through. BitForex stopped updating prices on Friday, and its website stopped working over the weekend. Its X and Telegram channels have not been updated since February 20.
Additionally, a shared cryptocurrency wallet linked to Bitforex.com saw $56.5 million exit on February 23, according to a prominent cryptocurrency investigator named ZackXBT On Twitter and Telegram.
The exchange did not respond to email requests for information about its condition. According to Pitchbook, Byte Capital and Consensus Lab were the only sources of venture capital for Bitforex in 2018; They also did not respond to requests for comment.
Founded in Hong Kong six years ago and operating as an unregulated offshore entity, BitForex claims to have served more than six million clients and, as of last week, routinely generated as much as $2.5 billion in cryptocurrency trading volume daily, according to the exchange, which disclosed Self. Data published by CoinMarketCap.com last week. Other estimates of BitForex.com's trading volume put it at over $2 billion per day across 387 cryptocurrency pairs, while some, like CryptoRank, were much lower.
BitForex trading volume estimates In millions of dollars per day, week of February 19, 2024
On January 31, Xinyao (Jason) Luo, founder and CEO of the exchange, announced his departure and said that the new leadership team “is about to take the reins” and “will guide BitForex to greater heights.”
This encrypted message is not the only mystery surrounding the company.
The main question to answer is why the exchange stopped working at a time when the cryptocurrency market was on the rise. BitcoinBTC just surpassed $57,000 for the first time since 2021 and could be poised to hit an all-time high later in the year as inflows into new exchange-traded funds based on the token's spot price continue to rise. The high-profile stock market crashes in 2022 for companies like FTX, Celsius, BlockFi, and Genesis came during a bear market sparked by irresponsible lending and other wrongdoing that appears to have dissipated.
The key to BitForex's situation could lie in its Japanese operations. Data from SameWeb, a web traffic analytics company, shows that 74% of visitors to BitForex.com during November 2023 came from Japan, where the company has never been allowed to offer its services. The second largest jurisdictions were India (7%) and Turkey (3%).
BitForex.com Geo Traffic Origin January 2021 to January 2024
The exchange saw an 85% drop in traffic to 176,000 web-only visits in January from 392 visits in December and 12.5 million visits in November. One possible explanation for this decline may be the crackdown by Japanese authorities. Forbes She contacted the Japan Financial Services Authority, the country's main cryptocurrency regulator, but did not receive a response.
The apparent collapse of BitForex highlights the challenges faced by cryptocurrency investors looking for safe, reliable and regulated exchanges. Forbes It published a ranking of the top 60 exchanges in March 2022, and BitForex was not included in the list. However, CoinPaprika and CryptoRank ranked it as the 3rd best exchange and 27th best in the world as of 2024. Considering the low reliability of this exchange, it is ranked outside the top 100 exchanges completely.
Follow me Twitter Or LinkedIn. paying off Some of my other works here. Send me a safe tip.
