Without putting up a notice or any sort of information, Turkish crypto exchange Thodex stopped operating, which leaves 391,000 clients without access to their funds.
The crypto exchange, which started operations in 2017, however, broke the silence via a Twitter post, explaining that an outside investment required the exchange to suspend operations for several days.
However, Oğuz Evren Kılıç, a lawyer in the Turkish capital Ankara, noted that Thodex move “may well be a scam” and filed a legal complaint against the exchange.
Kılıç’s worries are fueled by Thodex CEO Faruk Fatih Özer leaving Turkey shortly after the operations suspension. Özer also deleted all of his social media accounts, while Thodex suspended its customer support.
According to Kılıç, somewhere between $2-10 billion worth of cryptocurrencies is currently locked in the exchange. Meanwhile, an investigation by Turkey’s prosecutor’s office noted that there is “some money in the bank accounts of the exchange and its owners.”
“But we do not know the exact amount and whether that will be enough for everyone”, Kılıç added.
The exchange ran a DOGE marketing campaign days before the DOGE craze kicked in. Thodex rewarded every new customer with 150 DOGE upon completing the sign-in process. Thousands of new users were lured into the exchange, resulting in а record in trading volumes of $1.37 billion.
However, the exchange sold DOGE tokens at a fixed rate of $0.11, with an applied discount to the price on April 14. Meanwhile, the market price of Doge was $0.42 on April 16. The website’s suspension resulted in an immediate outcry from users of the exchange.
The Thodex suspension comes amid Turkey setting a ban on crypto payments citing increased risks of fraud. Turkish Minister of Industry and Technology, Mustafa Varank, stated last month that “cryptocurrency is ripe for fraud,” and that the government wouldn’t “give free rein to the cryptocurrency space that has such high risks.”