News	2018-10-30 04:30

Canadian Crypto Exchange Experiences Alleged Theft, Spurring Rumors of Potential Exit Strategy Instead

MapleChange is one of the latest cryptocurrency exchanges to come from Canada, but they recently experienced a loss of their funding, which allegedly included 913 Bitcoin, which was valued at $5.9 million at the time of the loss. However, due to the surrounding circumstances involving the loss, many experts in the industry are wondering if it is truly the theft that MapleChange claims, or if it is a way to swindle all of its users out of the funding they have invested.

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

To help eradicate the rumors that MapleChange is using the “loss” as an exit strategy, they have promised to users that they will be investigating. However, they stated that they were unable to provide any refunds right now. On the post, they added,

“We are extremely sorry that it has to come to end like this.”

It seems that, especially by ending the post with that sentiment, it does not seem to have helped the matter very much.

A small crypto exchange pulled off an exit scam, taking all customer funds.

There is no incentive for using small exchanges. Use established exchanges that are regulated, & transparent.

Small exchanges also focus on maximizing profitability, not security or investor protection pic.twitter.com/iKEO8rDv5z

— Joseph Young (@iamjosephyoung) October 28, 2018

There are some websites that say that the original tweet, one that said that the company was shutting down their businesses and social media presence, had been deleted. About five hours later, they came back to dispel rumors that they were jumping ship on their project, saying:

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

An hour after that post, a Discord server for refunds was opened, though the company noted that no refunds were available for BTC or LTC.

We have opened a Discord server for refunds. Please join. We will be creating a room so people can post their missing funds.https://t.co/7NtYuHe45W

— MapleChange (@MapleChangeEx) October 28, 2018

The week before the reported hack, MapleChange was experiencing some success with a major surge in activity. After reaching just about $3,000 in their daily trading volume for the majority of October, it seemed to bounce between $10,000 and $65,000 in the few days before the hack. It dropped back down to about $5,000 when the website maintenance occurred on October 27th. When the hack happened, the two pairings that saw the most trades included CCX/BTC and LMO/LTC.

We are unable to. Our exchange has been hacked by someone, and has been manipulated into their favour. pic.twitter.com/TSdmfw8UxK

— MapleChange (@MapleChangeEx) October 28, 2018

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

Of the tokens that MapleChange still has in their possession, they plan to refund the amounts back to the developers. So far, it claims to have returned funds to Lumeneo (LMO) and Carbon Credit Coin (CCX).

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

And avoid using exchanges that doesn't have anything in their cold wallets.

— CZ Binance (@cz_binance) October 28, 2018

As of the time of this publishing, they have returned the following coins to developers:

We are sending all of the coin developers the wallets containing the coins we have left. So far, LMO and CCX have been handed over the funds.

— MapleChange (@MapleChangeEx) October 28, 2018

XUN and SPES wallets have been given to the developers.

— MapleChange (@MapleChangeEx) October 29, 2018

$SHIELD and $DNR have been returned.

— MapleChange (@MapleChangeEx) October 29, 2018

$B2B, $WAE & $CFCC have been given their wallets back.

— MapleChange (@MapleChangeEx) October 29, 2018