MapleChange: Hack or Exit Scam

By Chetna Phour

A small Canadian Cryptocurrency exchange, MapleChange claimed that in a recent hack the exchange lost all of its funds. In the hack the cryptocurrency exchange lost almost $6 million, most of the fund was in the form of bitcoin and litecoin.

The crypto exchange has gone offline and said that there is no fund left to pay anyone back. Most of the people believe that it is an exit scam. Though MapleChange is in the process of a thorough investigation, the refund of users funds seems unlikely. The crypto exchange deleted most of its social media accounts. Almost one hour before deleting its Twitter page, MapleChange announced via a Tweet that,

“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 of this. We are extremely sorry that it has to come to an end like this. Until the investigation is over, we cannot refund anything.”

When a Twitter user asked the exchange regarding deleting its social media accounts including Discord and Telegram, the exchange said that

“We have no more funds to pay anyone back; the exchange has to close down, unfortunately. This includes all our social media.”

The MapleChange crypto exchange was established in May this year and listed 62 tokens including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin. The volume at the Crypto exchange was modest, and there were enough regular users who are needed for a healthy balance sheet.

Prominent voices from the crypto industry soon reacted on the MapleChange hack, pondering that the owners of MapleChange could have pulled off an exit scam. Exit scam is one of the most common and oldest tricks which is used by the crypto scammers. Exit scam means building a user base, earning their trust and then running away with their money. In exit scams, most of the scammers blame a hack for the closure. The Chief Executive Officer of Binance, Changpeng Zhao warned the crypto traders that they must avoid the cryptocurrency exchanges which do not offer coin storage in cold wallets. Changpeng Zhao also suggested that must be a ranking system so that the users can trade with most trusted, secured, and transparent exchanges.

Surprised with the hack crypto journalist Joseph Young advised the crypto traders to stay away from small unregulated crypto exchanges because usually small exchanges focus on maximization of profit instead of users’ funds.

In a Tweet, Joseph said that

“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 protect instead of protecting their customers.”