Crypto Exchange Zipmex Pauses Withdrawals, Citing 'Circumstances Beyond Our Control' (decrypt.co) 54
Zipmex, a Singapore-based digital assets trading platform, today announced that it is pausing customer withdrawals. From a report: The company took to Twitter on Wednesday to announce the move, citing "a combination of circumstances beyond our control" that made it take the decision. "Due to a combination of circumstances beyond our control including volatile market conditions, and the resulting financial difficulties of our key business partners, to maintain the integrity of our platform, we would be pausing withdrawals until further notice," said the exchange.
Zipmex, which markets itself as "Asia's leading digital assets exchange" and has offices in Thailand, Indonesia, and Australia, offers a variety of products including cryptocurrency spot trading and interest-bearing accounts. According to the company's website, users can enjoy up to 10% in rewards per year by depositing their funds on the platform. For example, Zipmex claims to offer 6% returns on Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), and 10% on the USDC stablecoin. The startup, which counts Eduardo Saverin's B Capital as an investor, had concluded a $52 million fundraise in March this year.
Zipmex, which markets itself as "Asia's leading digital assets exchange" and has offices in Thailand, Indonesia, and Australia, offers a variety of products including cryptocurrency spot trading and interest-bearing accounts. According to the company's website, users can enjoy up to 10% in rewards per year by depositing their funds on the platform. For example, Zipmex claims to offer 6% returns on Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), and 10% on the USDC stablecoin. The startup, which counts Eduardo Saverin's B Capital as an investor, had concluded a $52 million fundraise in March this year.
Another one bites the dust (Score:2)
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Hehehe, exactly!
What surprises me a bit that things do not deteriorate faster, but apparently these basically criminal enterprises are real masters at misdirection and creating illusions.
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For this one, yes, I agree. I meant more like crapcoins in general.
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The real pyramids were quite a bit more sturdy.
There's a sucker born every minute (Score:2)
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"Zipmex spent their depositors' money on hookers and cocaine."
And like fools they wasted the rest.
Re:There's a sucker born every minute (Score:5, Funny)
Hookers, cocaine, and NFTs. They sure do regret the NFTs now.
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Isn't it spelled tulip?
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Even if it wasn't theft by someone in the company, when you have countries like North Korea that literally has an army of hackers dedicated to trying to hack exchanges and steal whatever they can, and there is absolutely no recourse to recover stolen crypto, you have to really ask yourself how secure your investment is.
At least with regular banks there's some chance the funds can be chased, electronic transactions reversed etc.
But then if you were any good at risk analysis you wouldn't invest in crypto in
Isn't this good? (Score:2, Interesting)
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As I saw the headline, I will make an exception from my .sig.
Best comment today, definitely! Life is sometimes hilarious!
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No, it's not a good thing. It means the owners of the exchange spent your money. An exchange isn't supposed to be playing /r/wallstreetbets with customers' funds, but some people just have to learn the hard way why the traditional finance industry is regulated.
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They didn't spend my money, they may have spent yours. Yes, it's a good thing.
A matter of perspective (Score:2)
It's a good thing as a sign that the cryptocurrency dumpster fire is inching closer to burning itself out.
It's a bad thing for customers of Zipmex (why does that sound like it would be a good name for a line of tortilla chip dips?), who have to kiss their money bye-bye.
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Yeah, they urge people to hold, until they can find their wallet key in order to unload their own holdings first.
Circumstances beyond stupid, in the meantime... (Score:4)
If you _must_ "invest" in this "market", then you have to actually understand that one of the key concepts of the idea of decentralised money, is being a custodian of your own "assets".
At least then, you can be safe in the knowledge that as you see your "investment" lose 90% in a month, you can at least still access what is left at all times.
Speculating in cryptocurrency, unless you are very smart and connected, is stupid.
Keeping your investment on a centralised exchange is beyond stupid.
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For variable values of "access". Friend of mine tried to sell a BTC a while ago when things went down. He was unable to as fees were through the roof. The whole crapcoin idea does not work if you actually ty do do things on the blockchain itself and not via an exchange. Quite hilarious that.
Otherwise, completely agree.
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The reason for that is really simple. If you try to sell BTC, or ETH, or any crypto coin from your *own* wallet, you pay the full whammy on gaslighting fees, petrol fees, gas fees, whatever the fuel fee costs are for whatever crypto you're offering.
If you're selling through an exchange, it's not your wallet anymore, it's theirs, and they can just internally shuffle numbers around without *actually* selling anything and paying the fees.
You still pay fees, of course, but they're the exchange fees, not the cry
Re:Circumstances beyond stupid, in the meantime... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure. But in a very real sense you are not using the blockchain anymore either (as the story nicely demonstrates), and lose all the supposed advantages of it.
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Once upon a time a bunch of pilgrims found it a bit of a pain to carry gold with them all the way to the holy land. Some nice religious dudes with swords saw an opportunity and set up a little system where you could give them your gold at the start of your trip, they'd give you a receipt, then you could present the receipt and get your gold back at your destination. Less risk of theft and no need to haul a bunch of heavy metal thousands of kilometres!
The religious dudes with swords weren't the only ones wit
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Yep, people _are_ stupid. This is a nice example of that.
Of course, the story is a bit longer: Those "nice" religious dudes with swords figured out that they did not actually have to be able to give the gold back in many cases and hence spent it all on wine and whores. The people with the papers eventually discovered this and the papers lost all value.
Re:Circumstances beyond stupid, in the meantime... (Score:5, Informative)
For variable values of "access". Friend of mine tried to sell a BTC a while ago when things went down. He was unable to as fees were through the roof. The whole crapcoin idea does not work if you actually ty do do things on the blockchain itself and not via an exchange. Quite hilarious that.
Otherwise, completely agree.
Well yeah, it's nuts right?
So, what we have is :
* A speculative asset that can drop in value over 70% in a few months
* A speculative asset that can have transfer times sometimes taking over a day
* A speculative asset that costs a fortune to transfer
* A speculative asset you cannot use to purchase anything, in 99.999% of stores
* A concept that claims it can replace FIAT, but in order to enter or exit, requires FIAT
So, bottom line, it is nothing other than a speculative asset and is really a game of pass the parcel - the last one holding the bag loses.
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That nicely sums it up. I am still unable to understand why people fall for something this obviously broken. I mean, I can see they are, I can acknowledge the explanations as to why they do, but to me personally it is something so outlandish and irrational that I simply do not get it.
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if the guys with the Lambos are still hodling, they know something we don't know
I literally cannot agree any more. However, we disagree on what they know:
- You think they know they should hold because it will recover and they'll make even more money.
- I think they know they already sold, which is why the are "the guys with the Lambos" - they already got the fuck out and made off with other people's money (read: yours) and are laughing all the way to the fuel station in their fucking ridiculous Lamborghinis.
You don't just get a Lamborghini with a bow on it once your net worth reaches a
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Yep, that is pretty much it. Anybody that made real money with crapcoins has most of that in real money now.
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Yes, it does. The thing is I just do not understand why that happens as in, I just do not have that reaction. Well, maybe I am just greed-challenged.
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He was probably trying to sell when everyone else was also panicking and trying to sell, thus the fees went sky high. The gas fees are demand induced as I understand it, so if there's low transaction volume, the fees are substantially less.
Basically it's a fantastic way to fuck people just that little bit more on the way out when they're trying to not get completely fucked by having a pyramid collapse on their head.
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Actually yes, although this was in 2021, I think. It nicely showed to him that the crapcoin blockchain is a "fair weather" only construct and fails when needed most. No problem on his side, he was only gambling with money he could afford to lose.
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Basically it's a fantastic way to fuck people just that little bit more on the way out when they're trying to not get completely fucked by having a pyramid collapse on their head.
Everyone crowding and blocking the exits as the club goes up in flames. Sorry, only the people who set the fires or left at the first scent of smoke get out alive.
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Yes, that is actually a very nice comparison.
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Speculating in cryptocurrency, unless you are very smart and connected, is stupid.
But the only way it is smart for the smart and connected people is for there to also be the stupid people.
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The Superbowl ads should have clued people in. When the smart money is so desperate for greater fools they're willing to buy the most expensive ad time in television to find them, the bubble is about to burst. It happened with Dot Com ads in 2000, and you can bet we'll say the same thing about the Crypto ads in 2022.
Securities and Exchange Commission rules as needed (Score:2)
Securities and Exchange Commission rules as needed so that your broker can't just say we don't want to pay out WHAT YOU OWN.
Re: Securities and Exchange Commission rules as ne (Score:2)
behind the curtain (Score:2)
I'm not sure I want to know anything more about what is behind the crypto curtain. Obviously, there is no Wizard there.
Doublespeak (Score:4, Interesting)
Not allowing withdrawals is the action that demonstrates they don't have integrity. It's obviously not just an asset exchange if they're promising a return on parked assets.
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It sounds like they need to decide whether they are accepting deposits or selling shares in an investment. Why would a deposit have anything other than a nominal rate of return, if that? And if an investment, your money is at risk just like any security.
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It sounds like the customers have to decide whether they are depositors parking money in a bank/exchange or investors rolling the dice on an investment fund.
But this "exchange" has figured out it can fleece both kinds of suckers at once. They gain the advantages of both while having their way with the customers' money, while the customers suffer the worst of both worlds. Sounds perfect.
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I live in SE Asia. Tell you one thing about it... Never trust a crypto exchange based in SE Asia. These people are outright thieves, and incompetent ones at that.
Largest and most popular exchange in Thailand, just disappeared one day for 3 or 4 days few years ago. The whole thing, just down. They did explain later on facebook that they are upgrading their network, but you can imagine the level of incompetence when "upgrade" means unannounced downtime of 4 days.
And all these "temporarily suspended withdrawal
What is this 6% amateur hour (Score:1)
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Everybody knows that a real Ponzi pays 12%. Madoff wrote the book on that and wannabe copycatcrooks need to abide by the rules dammit.
The suckers who were looking for 12% returns have already been fleeced.
slightly smarter people who know 12% is a scam. But still want risk free money. 6% is a compromise between looking good enough to be worth it, something above the cash rate. But not "too good to be true".
The only important % to remember is 100%. That's the amount of money the suckers will lose handing it over to unregulated exchanges.
Due to a combination of circumstances (Score:1)
Due to a combination of circumstances beyond our control, such as volatile market conditions and Scott forgetting the password
Luckily they didn't suspend deposits (Score:2)
so fools like me can keep on burning cash on my cryptos.
I can't pay my debt (Score:2)
due to circumstances beyond my control - my wallet is empty and nobody wants to lend me money.
I got a bad feeling... (Score:1)