The Turkish cryptocurrency exchange Thodex stopped trading on Wednesday without any warning, along with which 391,000 active clients lost access to their wallets.
Thodex has been on the market since 2017. Yesterday, she posted on Twitter an announcement that in order to attract outside investment, she would need to stop trading for 4-5 business days. This is supposedly necessary to transfer a stake in the company to a new partner, and the investment will help improve the customer experience.
Important Information 👉 https://t.co/8DPOzm2pOX pic.twitter.com/Bg0cfuBLDB
— THODEX (@thodexofficial) April 21, 2021
So far, the situation only causes irritation and fears of users who have suddenly lost access to their money. The exchange does not provide any other information about the proposed transaction.
Thodex trading volumes exceeded $ 1.2 billion last Friday, tripling from the previous week, according to CoinGecko. Some social media users report that their investment in Thodex is “stuck,” while others have gone to complain about Turkey’s popular consumer protection forum Sikayetvar.
“It may well turn out to be a fraud,” said lawyer Oguz Evren Kilich, who has filed a lawsuit against the exchange, in a conversation with Decrypt.
Citing a police report, he also said that Thodex CEO Farouk Fatih Ozer left the country on Tuesday evening and deleted his social media accounts. In addition, the company stopped all types of customer support. Kilich estimates the amount of funds remaining on Thodex at $ 2-10 billion. A more precise amount will be known in the coming days. The investigation established “the presence of some money in the bank accounts of the exchange and its owners.”
“But we do not know the exact amount, and whether it will be enough for everyone,” the lawyer added.
Since March 15, for a month, the exchange has been campaigning to reward new customers with 150 Dogecoin coins. This reportedly attracted thousands of users, which helped set a new record for trading volumes. At the same time, users claim that since April 14, Dogecoin has been trading on Thodex at a fixed price of $ 0.1145750, while on world exchanges its price has risen above $ 0.40. The exchange did not allow withdrawing the cryptocurrency acquired in this way, referring to the maintenance of the wallet, which is very similar to the tactics of attracting additional investments before an exit scam.
It is also noteworthy when Thodex went out of business after four years of operation. Last week, the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey announced a ban on cryptocurrencies as a means of payment. The ban will take effect April 30 and, according to media reports, will force payment services, often used to replenish stock exchange wallets, to stop working with platforms for exchanging digital currencies. The authorities named the irreversibility of cryptocurrency transactions and the inherent risks of fraud as one of the main reasons for their decision.
Shortly before that, there was a surge of interest in cryptocurrencies in the country against the background of a sharp depreciation of the national currency. In the local peer-to-peer exchange market, the bitcoin price temporarily rose to $ 100,000.
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