They gave a only one month to withdraw funds from there, announcing on his blog and Twitter. I don't read their blog, nor do I follow their Twitter account, yet I didn't receive any email notification about this closing of the business.
I guess this is the reasoning behind this decision
Dear Hotbit users,
For 5 years and 4 months, the Hotbit team has been proud to participate in a wonderful crypto show with 5 million users. However, it is with great regret that we have made the decision to stop all CEX operations from May 22, UTC 04:00. We kindly ask all users to withdraw their remaining assets before June 21, UTC 04:00.
This decision is based on three reasons:
Firstly, the deterioration of the operating conditions. After the Hotbit management team was forced to suspend operations for several weeks due to the investigation in August 2022 (
https://hotbit.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/8074249353495), the industry has experienced a series of crises, including the collapse of FTX, bank crises causing USDC off-peg incidents, resulting in continuous outflows of funds from CEX users, including Hotbit, and deteriorating cash flow.
Secondly, the change in the crypto industry trend. The successive collapse of large centralized institutions has led the industry to gradually in two ways: either embrace the regulation or become more decentralized. The Hotbit team believes that centralized exchanges (CEX) are becoming increasingly cumbersome, with highly complex and interconnected businesses that are difficult to comply with, whether for compliance or decentralization, and are unlikely to meet long-term trends.
Since its beginning, Hotbit has been characterized by providing a rich variety of assets and value-added methods. Hotbit was the first exchange to list numerous emerging assets, including SHIB, KSM, GRIN and so on, and was the first to offer staking services starting from ATOM, as well as the first to conduct Defi mining business using Compound. However, due to the industry's uncertainty, various opportunities also contain many risks. Hotbit has also suffered numerous problems, such as repeated cyber attacks and the exploitation of project defects by malicious users, resulting in significant losses. Therefore, the Hotbit team believes that the operation model of supporting a diverse range of assets is unsustainable from a risk management standpoint.
That’s all, with so many joys and tears, our show is over. We want to say thank you and take a bow now. We still believe a bright future about crypto innovation and some of us will still fight for it.
