2018-7-31 21:26 |
HitBTC Goes OFFline Due To Hardware Fault
HitBTC, a major crypto exchange went down a short while ago due to a hardware fault. This is according to a post they made on Twitter. The exchange said that it needed at most two hours to fix the issue. However, they said that all the funds of traders were safe.
Dear traders, the HitBTC exchange is temporary unavailable from 11:25 UTC due to a hardware fault. We are working on resolving it – please allow maximum 2 hours for full recovery. Your funds are safe.
— HitBTC (@hitbtc) July 31, 2018
It Is Causing Some JittersDespite HitBTC promising that all funds were safe, not all users of the exchange felt reassured. Some of the clients have been having a field day posting hateful comments under the tweet. The main reason for most of the offensive tweets, appear to be due to a recent feud between John McAfee and HitBTC. McAfee is often called the king of crypto. However, other comments seem to be due to accounts being frozen or problems trying to withdraw funds.
The John McAfee FeudJohn McAfee has been feuding with HitBTC for a while now. In a recent tweet, he said that he would take legal action against the company. The feud began a few weeks ago in which John expressed outrage at how overbearing centralized exchanges were.
In the post, he spoke about HitBTC because the platform restricted the trade of the Docademic MCT tokens. McAfee is a major promoter of the MCT token, which wants to provide free basic healthcare to people globally. McAfee said that restricting MCT tokens had increased the suffering of millions of people.
He then called on his followers to boycott HitBTC. He, later on, fired another shot at them, claiming that their lack of regard for MCT was out of line with the crypto community. McAfee added that he would be their worst enemy until the issue had been resolved.
HitBTC did respond to the comments. However, they did not offer an argument for his claims. Instead, they backhandedly wished him well. This was after a recent attempt on his life, which left him in the hospital for three days. They did later issue a full response.
Technical Faults Are Not NewTechnical issues are not new in the world of crypto exchanges. Sometimes, the downtime is usually scheduled, like happened with the binance exchange. However, it does end up lasting longer than expected in some cases.
However, the most common reason for unscheduled downtime is often a hacker attack on the exchange. In the past few months, cases of hackers stealing millions of dollars in crypto have been reported. One of the biggest heists in recent months was at Bithumb, a South Korean exchange. At that hack, $31 million was lost. However, they managed to recover about half of it.
Earlier in the year, one of the biggest hacks in the history of crypto took place. The Coincheck exchange, which is based in Japan, lost coins worth over $550 million.
HitBTC is one of the largest exchanges today. It launched in 2013, but its location and ownership are still a bit murky. It used to be active in China until the crackdown of 2017. The exchange was forced to shift to Hong Kong and turn its attention to the global market.
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