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Irish Crypto Exchange Bitsane Disappears with Clients’ Funds

Bitsane, a Dublin-based cryptocurrency exchange, has disappeared earlier this month along with the stored funds of thousands of users, according to a Forbes report.

Last month, the traders on the platform were facing some difficulties in withdrawing their deposits which include Bitcoin and XRP, following which they received an email from the exchange’s support team stating: “[The services are] temporarily disabled due to technical reasons.”

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However, by June 17, the exchange’s website went offline without any notice, even its social media accounts – Twitter and Facebook – were deleted. The Linkedin account of its CTO Dmitry Prudnikov was also deleted, while no necessary information is available on the profile of the exchange’s CEO Aidas Rupsys.

By May 30, the platform had 246,000 registered users, as seen on Internet Wayback Machine, and was handling $7 million in daily trading.

Though the exact number of victims or the involved amount is not known yet, many users are claiming to have lost up to $5,000, while one user lost digital assets worth as much as $150,000, per the June 27 report. Victims are now turning to Telegram and Facebook groups to share their grievances.

Legit businesses vouching for scammers

Launched in late 2016, Bitsane gained popularity for providing trading services with XRP, when only a handful of exchanges were offering the service. The exchange was also officially recommended by Ripple for buying and selling XRP, which was put down recently.

Given the recent bullish value of Bitcoin, which is trading at $11.370, as of press time, the exchange has chosen a suitable time to run away with clients’ funds.

Bitsane’s action is similar to its Polish counterpart Coinroom, which also disappeared overnight in April with an unidentified amount of customers’ funds.

Meanwhile, crypto platforms are again becoming a hot target for cybercriminals. Singapore-based digital currency exchange Bitrue was hacked yesterday, resulting in the theft of more than $4.5 million worth XRP and Cardano’s ADA token.

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