MapleChange cryptocurrency trading platform shuts down
MapleChange, a small Canadian cryptocurrency trading platform, drew ire from investors over the weekend for its sudden departure.
Due to a bug, some people have managed to withdraw all the funds from our exchange. We are in the process of a thorough investigation for this. We are extremely sorry that it has to come to end like this. Until the investigation is over, we cannot refund anything.
— MapleChange (@MapleChangeEx) October 28, 2018
Users were widely unimpressed by the news, and reacted with a range of emotion from amusement to rage and criticism of MapleChange’s methods.
damn, didn’t even try to hide the exit scam
— CryptoGraphicDad (@Cryptographish) October 29, 2018
OK… Then this is why you only hire very experienced coders to build sites whose existence literally depends on the security of the site. That and paying for pen testing/code assessment via expensive third-party on a regular basis.
— Peter Marreck (@pmarreck) October 29, 2018
Inside job, by the “hackers” you also pay a wage to? Glad I didn’t put my trust in this exchange. Refund the people you have let down.
— CurrentCryptocy UK (@CurrentCryptocy) October 29, 2018
Man :(, I was excited that local boys made shop.
— 👻 Joshua J. Bouw 🎃 (@JoshuaJBouw) October 29, 2018
Following the tweet, the website for the exchange, maplechange.com, no longer worked and MapleChange closed all social media accounts (its Twitter account came back online a short while later, although they reiterated they could not return any funds).
We have not disappeared guys. We simply turned off our accounts temporarily to think this solution through. We cannot refund everyone all their funds, but we will be opening wallets to whatever we have left so people can (hopefully) withdraw their funds.
— MapleChange (@MapleChangeEx) October 28, 2018
The company eventually posted a Discord server to discuss refunds, but many users on Twitter reported the invitation not working shortly after the tweet went out.
MapleChange’s messaging changed somewhat throughout the incident, at first tweeting that they had “no more funds” to pay anyone back, then saying investors could private message the account with their email, the amount they were missing and where to withdraw it.
In a series of tweets sent Monday morning, MapleChange stood by its claim that it was hacked, despite widespread accusations that their actions were part of an exit scam.
Irrelevant of what the media has spewed out about us, I’d like to bring to light our point of view, should you choose to believe it or not. We have NEVER had 919BTC in our wallet, the picture that displayed so showed the volume abuse caused by the hackers.
— MapleChange (@MapleChangeEx) October 29, 2018
The following are pictures of the abuse (markets). The first picture represents our PEAK exchange when recovering from the backup. This backup was prior or right when the attack started as we’ve discovered many addresses with negative balances. pic.twitter.com/h2iLtvzwbe
— MapleChange (@MapleChangeEx) October 29, 2018
The negative balance was used in order to fully buyout every market the attackers felt like, they were able to sell without limitations and accumulated 15BTC of non-existent funds. Out of which they only managed to withdraw what he had in total – 8BTC.
— MapleChange (@MapleChangeEx) October 29, 2018
Multiple tweets about recovered wallets began going out early Monday afternoon, but some users were still unable to see their wallets due to maplechange.com still being down. Or criticized the move of getting developers to recover wallets in this way.
I’m sure many communities, Masari included, would *not* support this action – handing over undisclosed funds to developers of a project is a horrible way to handle this, and there’s nobody other than the exchange itself that can confirm and release funds to its rightful owners
— Masari (@masaricurrency) October 29, 2018
Nigel Green, founder and chief executive of independent financial advisors organization deVere Group, says that investing in cryptocurrency is never a sure thing, and crypto investors should never feel like they’re 100 per cent protected against security issues.
“You must never anticipate an exchange to be safe and secure,” says Green. “Doing your homework will pay dividends.”
With more than 200 exchanges in operation, that can be a daunting task.
Green says what you should look for in an exchange is one that is easy to use, and one that shows signs of good liquidity. For a lot of investors, that will mean going for a more established exchange.
“The larger exchanges backed by robust companies would be ideal, because they obtain adequate orders to quickly match buyers and seller orders, as well as having the economic position of scale to keep charges down,” says Green.
“Investors ought to assess exchanges as well as the businesses behind them as they would do with any other organization that they would depend on to grow and protect their money, such as financial institutions.”
Yahoo Canada Finance readers, do you have tips to share on choosing a cryptocurrency exchange? Share them with us in the comments.
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