Bitbns exchange was convicted of zeroing customer accounts
Date: 2023-06-28 Author: Karina Ziganova Categories: CRYPTO PAYMENTS
The controversial Indian cryptocurrency exchange Bitbns, which curtailed the withdrawal of cryptocurrencies in 2022, has reset customer accounts
The Bitbns cryptocurrency exchange has unilaterally reset customer accounts. This is reported by Business Today with reference to the affected users of the exchange. According to some victims, they did not even trade on the exchange, but exclusively stored cryptocurrency.
Despite the lack of activity, the exchange also zeroed out their accounts. Some victims also reported that the exchange notified them of trading transactions, although the users themselves did not conduct trades. Clients of the exchange also said in a media commentary that before the zeroing of accounts, records of sell transactions appeared in their order history.
Bitbns exchange CEO Gaurav Dahake said in a commentary to Business Today that the incident is not the result of "any external security breach." According to him, there was a "small technical failure" in the exchange.
"I personally guarantee that our team is aware of this problem, and we expect to solve it within a few hours," says Dahake.
Users note that starting in November 2022, the exchange has curtailed the withdrawal of cryptocurrencies. Dahake himself tried to refute these accusations, stating that Bitbns still allows peer-to-peer transactions between traders on its platform. At the same time, deposits in Bitbns work normally, Business Today notes.
Earlier, a crypto sleuth under the pseudonym ZachXBT found out that Bitbns, under the pretext of "technical work", lied to customers for a whole year about the fact of hacking the trading platform. According to ZachXBT's calculations, the exchange lost about $7.5 million in various tokens, which the attacker converted into ether (ETH) and laundered through Tornado Cash. Some of the stolen funds were laundered through a certain cryptocurrency exchange, but the crypto investigator decided not to disclose its name.
A couple of weeks after the revelation, Dahake confirmed the hacking of the exchange as part of an AMA session. He did not directly disclose either the date of the hack or specify the extent of the incident. Instead, he tried to reassure users by stating that many crypto exchanges have experienced theft of funds, including Binance. Bitbns victims interviewed by Business Today claim that law enforcement agencies in India do not care about the fraudulent practices of cryptocurrency exchanges.
