A technical glitch on the Philippine cryptocurrency exchange PDAX temporarily pushed Bitcoin’s price down to $6,000. The platform’s management demanded that users return the thousands of bitcoins they had purchased.
We’d like to thank you all for your patience regarding the incident that happened on Feb 16. Below is our statement, as of today Feb 20. Please expect us to continue to update you of the developments, which we are working on round the clock.
Thank you. pic.twitter.com/HvWFIRsSyy
— PDAX (@pdaxph) February 20, 2021
During planned maintenance on February 16, Bitcoin’s price fell by 88%. Some users managed to buy and transfer assets to external wallets before trading and withdrawals were halted. For the rest, the exchange reset their balances to zero.
On February 23, PDAX CEO Nichel Gaba said at a press conference about what happened. According to him, many users will be upset, but “the exchange never owned these bitcoins.”
One PDAX customer said on Reddit that he managed to withdraw the assets bought at a low price. A day later, he received a letter and an SMS from the exchange demanding the return of the bitcoins and threatening legal action.
According to the user, he purchased the digital currency within his rights and did not violate any laws or exchange rules. He also sought legal assistance on Reddit.
Earlier, the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb will compensate clients for lost bitcoins at the 2018 rate.
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