Foxbit, Brazil’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has been down for over 72 hours, reportedly because of a bug that allowed its users to withdraw their bitcoin balances twice. The problem saw the company lose a total of 30 Bitcoins, at press time worth roughly $270,000.
Through a livestream on YouTube, the company’s CEO João Canhada and COO Luís Augusto Schiavon, revealed the bug saw its users take advantage of the exchange’s withdrawal system to duplicate 130 withdrawals. After realizing what was going on, Foxbit immediately launched an emergency maintenance mode to halt withdrawals. The maintenance mode reportedly corrupted some of its service providers’ data.
Per the company’s executives, data is now being restored, and Foxbit should be back up by March 14. Through a blog post, the cryptocurrency exchange informed its users that it wasn’t hacked, and linked back to two cold wallets to show their funds were safe.
In an attempt to calm its users down, Canhada and Schiavon stated (roughly translated):
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“All funds are protected, both in reais and in bitcoins. Several clients have already returned duplicate values and we are in touch with everyone. We have a specific fund to cover possible losses and the funds in reais are safe in our bank accounts. The platform was neither hacked nor stolen. “
While Foxbit’s CEO and COO claim some users have already returned their ill-gotten funds, it isn’t clear how much was returned. Nevertheless, Foxbit assured that the money that went missing doesn’t harm its operation, as it represents a small percentage of what it currently has. The wallets shown in its blog post have over 7,500 BTC in total.
To further protect users during its downtime, the platform is set to cancel several orders so users don’t lose their balances while unable to manage their accounts. Nevertheless users watching the livestream asked whether the exchange would make it up to them, by creating a zero-fee trading period, for example.
The company’s CEO and COO merely stated they were paying close attention to what was going on but didn’t go any further.
Notably bitcoin is growing big in Brazil. According to CryptoCompare data, the Brazilian Real makes up 0.02% of the cryptocurrency’s daily trading volume, and the country’s police even took down a ‘digital currency’ pyramid scheme last year. As covered by CCN, Brazilian central bank president Ilan Goldfajn took a dismissive stance against bitcoin, and claimed it was a “typical bubble or pyramid [scheme].”
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Source: https://www.ccn.com/270000-brazils-largest-bitcoin-exchange-foxbit-72-hours-30-btc-missing/