What makes you believe this guy Ray Youssef will succeed this time as he failed the last time?
If they can reach out to this guy and make demands -and they will- that $700 limit will be gone in no time.
If he is going to make money from this exchange -and I think he will- then he will be paying taxes to the gov. That means the project is dead on arrival. No need to waste any time on it.
Paxful is actually still running until now, although it isn't anymore in the hands of Youssef. I think it's currently operated by somebody appointed by the court since its ownership has been disputed by co-founders Youssef and Schaback. Youssef actually tried to kill it himself and exhorted all users to migrate using their existing login information to NoOnes, his own creation, albeit essentially just a copy of Paxful.
I'd rather stay away from both of these controversial platforms. That's for peace of mind and security. There are other better options, anyway.
Paxful is alive the same way changelly is.
Nobody uses them anymore as they lost their main selling point.
The point is they are centralized and can be shut down or forced to make changes on the platform by the government.
Which means they were never alive in the first place.