End of May, End of Bitfinex Service (Temporarily)
On 31st May the crypto exchange- Bitfinex announced on Twitter that it would be halting its services for 3 to 4 hours. Bitfinex is a comprehensive spot trading facility for major digital assets. Bitfinex offers leveraged market margin trading, which enables users to trade with leverage securely. You can also read our bitfinex reviews page to get more information about it. The reason stated by the crypto exchange was the “outrage” of one of their “network providers.” Further, the exchange ensured its users that their funds are safe and sound. These funds are stored in “cold storage.” The tweet further expressed an apology for the inconvenience that this sudden change has caused to the users.
Given the fact that the crypto exchange has had quite not such proud incidents in history, the sudden news of shutting down the services, even though temporarily, has naturally stirred doubts in the minds of the users. Things such as the recent accusation of Craig Wright on the crypto exchange for sponsoring prostitution and slavery, or the fact that the crypto exchange is hacker’s favourite given that the exchange was attacked by the hackers twice- once in May 2015 which caused a loss of $400,000, and the second hack was executed in August 2016, when a whopping $73 million was stolen from the platform; all these incidents create bouts of worry and anxiousness in the users.
Addressing the worry of the users, the crypto exchange’s CTO- Paolo Ardoino said-
Due to the outage of one of our network providers, we temporarily paused deposits and withdrawals. Funds are safe in cold storage. The situation should be restored ASAP. Apologies for the inconvenience.
Ardoino further provided a few links to the hot wallets for the users. This was done to give confidence to the user-base community of the exchange that their funds are safe and no transaction has been taking place.
The crypto exchange has been in troubled waters in recent times. Bitfinex and Tether (the affiliated stablecoin issuer) were accused by the New York Attorney General (NYAG) Letitia James of covering up an $850 million loss. This major amount had the potential to affect the investors hailing from New York City. Although at that time, the crypto exchange didn’t open up about the loss to investors. In the infamous incident, the crypto exchange got access to around 900 million U.S Dollars of Tether’s cash reserves. The exchange took approximately 700 Million U.S. Dollars from Tether’s reserves. The amount was then used for covering up the losses and to manage the user’s transactional demands.
Not everything is looking down. Last month, the crypto exchange made an announcement about the listing of its new token UNUS SED LEO on Monday, May 20 at 08:00 UTC. Not only this, the exchange has recently completed a private sale of 100% of outstanding UNUS SED LEO tokens in exchange for one billion USDT worth of Bitcoin, USD, and USDT.
On the other hand, late May, the crypto exchange posted the announcement on its Twitter handle, which entailed about the first wave of benefits for the UNUS SED LEO token holders. As per the announcement, these holders will “have their taker fees reduced by 15% across.” The crypto exchange concluded-
At Bitfinex, we remain intensely dedicated to growing the range of benefits for Bitfinex traders, continuing to develop the essential infrastructure required for our industry to grow. We welcome you to the era of UNUS SED LEO.
