Topic: 75 Crypto Exchanges have shut down since this year started and hasn't even ended - page 2. (Read 791 times)

HotBit turned into scam? It was surprising news for me. I thought they are one of the trusted exchange site. Why this sites "Just Disappeared"? They might be scam or they turned into scam while closing their site.
Soon sites like P2PB2B will be in this list under scam or just disappear lol

They cannot keep up with the competition or lacks the proper marketing to attract more traders, exchanges are multi-million dollar business and it's also the favorite target of hackers and scammers and once a small exchange is hacked, it's the end of the line for them if a start up exchange cannot attract in its first five months I don't think they can continue their operations.

Probably those exchanges that has been shutting down are those exchanges that has not yet established or had been start so low that it was not able to compensate the needed things in the operation.

I think users that has Bitcoin will not going to trust exchanges that has no good feedback or review or exchanges that are not so good like those establish cryptoexchges. Some of the cryptoexchages are from those ICO projects that has only low funds that could help them somehow if they got a good support from its community.

When someone do tends to build and exchange platform then its just really not appealing for having some ICO's or some sort because if we do look back on how those
known and popular exchange now where they do start up without needing those which basically means that they are financially capable which is really a strong indication
that this might be a serious one that someone should looked for but for those who do ask out for some investment or funding then its better to ignore and yet
those sweet promises and assurances came out from their mouth would really just vanished into thin air when those money accumulated had been scammed.

Out for those exchange been mentioned, i havent even known majority of them and due to lack of liquidity then its no surprise that they would just disappear without saying anything.

Rebrands are mostly on the part of Exchanges that voluntarily shutdown or made an announcement to customers before shutting down, and they are about 4 of them, so I think the number is fair enough given that the vast majority are them that disappeared without a warning or exit scammed.

Those stats are hard to collect, so I don't think we have any. Because, most of the scam exchanges  fake volume and just disappear without a trace. It's only a few people who come out to make scam accusations or reviews while a majority of them just go silent.

I don't know if I should be embarassed of myself but I can name right off the top of my head 4/5 exchanges NOT in that list that I know failed (I should say scam since they just died quiet deaths) but yeah, insignificant volumes probably is the precise reason they died anyway. I didn't know about HBUS but I actually signed up on 3 different Huobi platforms (client requirement), and at least one died, they had to reintegreate into Huobi global for some of them I believe.

If something like this occurred and ask for funds to the people before they can officially lunch then we shouldn't support any of them since for sure it will end up something like scamming since for sure they will not last long and those claims to become big will not gonna happen.

That's why we need to go on old or if there's new we should check the reliability and transparency.

And yet there are still many developers that's thinking that they can make it big in the exchange industry, some of these exchanges are launching a crowdfunding, people should not support this, because there  are exchanges right now stable exchanges that did not launch a crowdfunding compared to those who launch one, we are ok with big exchanges now, if a new one is coming they should prove themselves first.

Is there any stats on how many users were affected or how much money was lost with those exchanges that disappeared without warning?
I suppose the other exchanges allawed their customers to withdraw their coins before shutting down for good!
I'm not surprised by those numbers since dozens of new exchanges keep popping up out of nowhere and competing with bigger/older exchanges isn't that easy.

to be fair, the vast majority of those are no-name exchanges with very little volume---not exactly significant. there were 5 names that i recognized: HBUS, the pit, virwox, cobinhood, and IDAX.

virwox, cobinhood, and IDAX are no surprise. virwox got hacked many years ago and never recovered. i'm surprised they were still around at all. HBUS (huobi's USA platform) never gained traction.

i was surprised to see the pit (blockchain.com's new exchange) listed, then i realized it was just rebranded to blockchain.com exchange. since re-brandings are included on the list, 75 might be an exaggeration.

Always suspected so but honestly didn't know it was that bad. Thought exchanges gave up in 2018 already, even DEXes stopped putting their spins out (Except all these ABV-swap platforms mushrooming up).

Just saw that on ETH alone also there's a rugpull Defi every 8/9 minutes.

And we wonder why crypto's got such a bad reputation. Outside of Bitcoin, probably deserved.

The lucky few like you are me are informed about which platforms not to use but out there, we have newbies who fall prey to the scam platforms that have little liquidity, so I think it would make sense having them listed too.

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@The Pharmacist, Here is the list of 34 exchanges that disappeared with no explanation. South Korea and Hong Kong seem to be leading the pack.

01. Unichange - Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
02. Crypto Dao - UK
03. BTCbear - Estonia
04. 3XBIT - Brazil
05. CredoEx - USA
06. Purcow - Hong Kong
07. CoolCoin - Australia
08. ZG.top - Mongolia
09. Coinrate - UK
10. ICOCryptex - Netherlands
11. LEOxChange - UAE
12. IDAX - Mongolia
13. TOPBTC - Australia
14. ChaoEX - Hong Kong
15. CoinMex - Belize
16. 55 Global Markets - USA
17. CoinZest - South Korea
18. CryptoDerivatives - Unknown
19. Coinfinit - South Korea
20. Nexybit - South Korea
21. South Korea - Unknown
22. BitBegin - Nigeria
23. TiDeal - Hong Kong
24. LBank - Hong Kong
25. Coinrail - South Korea
26. BitHash - Seychelles
27. QBTC - Cayman Islands
28. Efin.cx - Hong Kong
29. Bitrush - Netherlands
30. FUBT - Hong Kong
31. TokenJar - Unknown
32. CashFinex - Estonia
33. Krypto Connection - UK
34. Coinchangex - Morocco

The definition of the platforms needs a lot of scrutinies because many of the platforms that are added are considered a scam or have very little liquidity.
Therefore, if we take into account the platforms that can be trusted, the number will decrease to a few platforms, which we can consider as reliable.
As for keeping your money on these platforms, it is a waste of time.

The platforms are used to exchange bitcoin (from fiat or other cryptos) not holding it.

Not only just Yobit, the other Unpopular scam exchanges that are still operating are HitBTC and Livecoin. I have never used Livecoin but I have ever used HitBTC and Yobit before totally abandoning them. One thing I noted about both exchanges is their abnormally high withdrawal and trading fees as compared to other exchanges. So I guess they survive through those abnormal fees, and I am pretty sure their listing fees could be ridiculously high too. That, and selectively scamming people keeps them a float

For 80% of these exchanges, I have never heard of. I guess it's not a problem that there won't be any more. If most had a business as well Tradesatoshi or Cobinhood this is positive news.

is there an estimate of how much money they embezzled? I believe that there are certainly those who have money locked there.

Personally, I am not at all surprised that this crypto exchange is still alive if we take into account that it is a company that is primarily related to Russia. You may not know how the system works there, but everything there is under strict control and no one operates without the approval of their various services that make sure everyone plays by their rules. So I would conclude that they are a team player with permission from the top to do what they know best.

Exchange in question also has a pretty good user base thanks to the advertising that happened on this forum, and through the acquisition of a forum that shill them in every possible ways.

This number is indeed surprisingly high. The breakdown is as follows:

• 5 - Scams
• 4 - Hacked
• 31 - Voluntarily shut down
• 34 - MIA; disappearing with no explanation
• 2 - Shut down by governments

*Note that the total is actually 76. The list provided by cryptowisser.com is also 76.

However, I am more interested in the overall implication of this. What does this suggest? We cannot certainly conclude that it is hard to maintain a crypto exchange because governments are inimical to their existence or operation. Out of the 76 closed exchanges, only 2 were shut down by governments.

Moreover, we cannot also claim that online threats such as hacks and other attacks played a central role because only 4 of the 76 which fell down were caused by hacks.

While I agree with the article that the rise of DeFi in 2020 could have played a major role, I disagree that the rise of DEXs in 2020 is also one macro trend which could have caused it. Which DEX in particular came and aggressively competed in the market in 2020? Was there even a huge wave of DEXs in 2020? As a matter of fact, DEXs are also included in this list.

My hunch is that many of these exchanges were part of the sudden influx of exchanges in 2016-2018, the time when thousands and thousands of tokens flocked the crypto market. Now, with so many altcoins dead and trading volumes of those which remained are terribly falling down, profits are also decreasing, definitely touching rock bottom to a lot.

Or perhaps the crypto market is too small to accommodate all of them, considering that the largest pieces of the pie are only divided among few exchange monopolies.

In other words, it must have something to do with profit, at least to many of them, which is not mentioned in the article. Operating and maintaining a crypto exchange might not be a profitable undertaking anymore that's why they are forced to voluntarily shut down. This must also explain the very high count of abandoned exchanges, those MIA. They wouldn't have been abandoned in the first place had they been providing juicy income to the owners.

Here you go. Looks like there is a lot of exchange death in Netherlands, Hong Kong...

Edit:
(Oops, wrong list. These are the 31 that closed down voluntarily. I will try compiling the other 34 you requested tomorrow)

01. DFlow - Estonia
02. VirWox - Australia
03. HBUS - USA
04. Cobinhood - Cayman Islands
05. Chainrift - USA
06. Fcoin Exchange - China
07. Bitbox - Singapore
08. Trade Satoshi - UK
09. EasyRabbit - Cyprus (Rebranded to Easybit)
10. Sparkdex  - Hong Kong
11. Koineks - Turkey
12. Fisco - Japan (Merged with Zaif)
13. Bitlish - UK
14. Stellar DEX  -Unknown
15. GuldenTrader - Netherlands
16. OmniTrade -Brazil
17. BHEX - Malta (Rebranded to HBTC)
18. DEx.top - Unknown
19. Hodly - USA
20. OpenLedger DEX - Denmark
21. Bitqist - Netherlands
22. BTCEXA - Australia
23. Token.Store - Unknown
24. Nocks - Netherlands
25. Blockonix - Malta
26. ANXPRO - Hong Kong
27. Orderbook.io - Singapore
28. Instant Bitex - UK
29. Bitunio - UK
30. BOA Exchange - Romania (acquired by Bitcoin.com)
31. The PIT - Netherlands (Rebranded as Blockchain Exchange)

I wonder what countries those 34 exchanges were operating out of.  Any idea?

And OP, you're damn right about not using an exchange as your wallet.  That's absolutely one of the first things any newbie to crypto should learn.  I remember when I was acquiring my first bitcoin years ago, it wasn't clear to me that I shouldn't have kept coins on an exchange or in an online wallet--but I learned those things as I kept reading threads on bitcointalk.

I'm damned surprised that Yobit is still in business, and I'm wondering how long they're going to last.

It’s no longer something new, we talk about this all the time. Over the years we have seen lots of exchanges being hacked, and not just hacks lots of other things has been happening. Anyone that is storing their coins on an exchange by now is just doing so on purpose and should be ready to bear the consequences when it happens.

There are lots of offline/hardware/personal wallets that one can make use of to store their coins, and exchanges are no option, you should only make use of exchanges whenever you feel like trading and nothing more. I have heard of exchanges that were shutdown by governments for one purpose or the other, you can just wake up and that’s how you will lose your money for no reason.