Possible Crypto Exit Scam In Turkey

Turkish cryptocurrency exchange, Thodex is no longer accessible and its Chief Executive Officer is missing. Users of the exchange are filing complaints alleging that hundreds of millions of dollars have been stolen.

Thodex, a Turkish cryptocurrency exchange abruptly stopped trading, thereby leaving its users in a state of absolute shock, restlessness, and apprehension. This has caused users and investors to lodge criminal complaints against the exchange and call it a hoax. Shortly after the complaints, even the chief executive officer of the Turkish exchange disappeared.

Users of the exchange have taken to Twitter and other social media sites to vent out their frustration and helplessness. They’ve been sharing the troubling messages they get as they try to access the platform.

The message users receive when trying to log into their accounts is that transactions have stopped so the company can evaluate a partnership offer. The message also states that this could take four to five business days. At the time when the site was shut down there were $585 million in crypto on the exchange.

This is the kind of stuff that can happen with centralized points of failure. In the past too there have been a wide array of ways that exchanges have gone offline.

The Thodex scam comes at a time when Turkey has started a crypto crackdown, particularly on exchanges.

The Thodex exchange did give out warning signs that should have alerted users about its legitimacy. There were certain statements that were good to be true. The exchange started trading certain coins like dogecoin at a much lower price than others, almost 30% less, a night before it shut down.

A lot of DeFi hacks happened just last year, a lot of these funds were found and traced back. Even historically Bitcoin funds have been ceased from exchanges that are hacked. Technology has made it easy to track all the information so it might not be long before the Thodex hack is also traced. The best hackers in the crypto space flip it immediately into DeFi exchanges and continuously keep flipping.

Interest in crypto and usage of crypto has been growing for a long time in Turkey where it is currently unregulated. The Turkish crypto market is really thriving because of the recent volatility of the Lira and also because crypto trade is an unregulated activity. However, recently the Turkish government banned crypto tokens for payment.

The Turkish government is cracking down more and more. So it does put a lot of the businesses who have built themselves up in Turkey under a lot of pressure. These crypto-oriented businesses are about to lose everything just because the government decides that it is going to ban crypto payments. This keeps one wondering what a lot of these businesses are going to do who’ve relied on this.