According to a Forbes study, Bitsane, a cryptocurrency exchange based in Ireland, vanished previously this month with millions of user's funds.
Last month, traders on the platform faced some difficulty withdrawing their deposits including Bitcoin and XRP, after which they received an email from the support team of the exchange stating that the services are temporarily disabled for technical reasons.
Nevertheless, by June 17, the website of the exchange came offline without any notice and even removing its social media accounts–Twitter and Facebook. The Linkedin account of its CTO Dmitry Prudnikov has also been removed, while the profile of the exchange CEO Aidas Rupsys does not contain the required data.
By May 30th, as seen on Internet Wayback Machine, the platform had 246,000 registered users and according to experts, handled $7 million in daily trading.
Although the exact number of victims or the amount involved is not yet known, many users claim to have lost as much as $5,000, while one user has lost digital assets worth as much as $150,000 as reported on June 27. Victims are now sharing their grievances with Telegram and Facebook organizations.
Launched in early 2016, when only a handful of exchanges offered the service, Bitsane achieved popularity in providing trading facilities with XRP. Ripple also formally advised the exchange to buy and sell XRP, which was later dismissed.
Given Bitcoin's latest bullish value of trading at around $12,000, the exchange has selected an appropriate moment to run away with money from customers.
The actions of Bitsane are comparable to its Polish counterpart Coinroom, which also vanished overnight in April with an unknown quantity of money from clients.
At the same time, for cybercriminals, crypto platforms are again becoming a hot destination. Digital currency exchange based in Singapore Bitrue was hacked yesterday, leading in theft of more than $4.7 million worth of Ripple and Cardano.