Speculation of Hack or Scam at BitForex Exchange Involving $56 Million

On February 23, approximately $56.5 million was withdrawn from the hot wallets of the cryptocurrency exchange BitForex, noted on-chain researcher ZachXBT.

Seeing some suspicious activity with the crypto exchange @bitforexcom.

On Feb 23 their hot wallets saw outflows of ~$56.5M. Shortly after this time withdrawals stopped processing with no official announcements having been made since.

Currently users are asking questions on… pic.twitter.com/gFEcwExHKh

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) February 26, 2024

At the time of writing, no official comments have been made by the team.

The expert noted that about a month ago, the CEO of the development company left the project.

According to the data presented, nearly the entire amount withdrawn was in Ethereum tokens Tellor Tributes (TRB). The asset’s price fell from around $118 to just above $114 over the past day (CoinGecko).

The moved funds represent approximately 18% of the total TRB supply.

One user reminded that they had contacted ZachXBT about a possible BitForex scam last year. However, the analyst did not respond.

The last activity on the exchange’s X account was recorded on February 21. In response to a post asking about the most popular crypto project of 2024, one user directly asked:

“Are you guys scammed?”

Are you guys scammed?

— Ella denis (@EllaDenis5) February 23, 2024

At the time of writing, the platform’s website is inaccessible, even with a VPN. ZachXBT also reported that the project team is not responding to inquiries.

The service CoinMarketCap provides data that is 64 hours old. According to it, the most popular pair on the platform was ETH/USDT with a daily trading volume of ~$280 million. The BTC/USDT figure was ~$175 million.

In 2023, the cryptocurrency industry suffered losses of $2.61 billion due to hacks and scams, according to PeckShield specialists.