The story of BitForex's "runaway": $57 million withdrawn in one day, the behind-the-scenes operator suspected of being involved in the "professional" black history of runaway exchanges.

On the afternoon of February 26, 2024, in the UTC+8 time zone, the well-established exchange BitForex was reported by a large number of users to be unable to log in or withdraw funds, leading to suspicions of a "runaway" that quickly became a focal point of discussion in the crypto community. As on-chain data, team backgrounds, and historical controversies were continuously uncovered, this incident gradually revealed the cold outline of a "professional runaway team," once again pushing the trust crisis of centralized trading platforms to the forefront.

Timeline of Fund Movements and Shutdown

● Clear collective withdrawal time points: On-chain data shows that on February 23, BitForex transferred assets from multiple on-chain hot wallets to external addresses, with a single-day outflow of approximately $57 million, marking the largest single-day transfer in recent times.
● Multi-chain asset synchronized transfer: These funds mainly came from BitForex's marked addresses, covering BTC, ETH, and various ERC-20 tokens, and were quickly split and layered into multiple new wallets, significantly complicating the transfer paths.
● No prior official warning: Before and after the large fund outflows, BitForex did not issue any announcements regarding system maintenance, wallet upgrades, or risk control adjustments on its official website, X, or other official channels, which was clearly inconsistent with normal operational patterns.
● Service interruption points: User feedback indicated that from February 24-25, the BitForex App and web platform began experiencing issues such as unable to log in, K-line loading failures, and order interface errors, with some users' asset pages briefly displaying as 0 before recovering.
● Completely inaccessible: By February 26, an increasing number of users from various regions reported that the site timed out or showed a 502 error, with all API interfaces failing, and off-platform group administrators going silent, indicating that the platform was effectively in a "missing offline" state.
● No official clarification: By the time the incident was widely exposed, the BitForex team had neither provided reasons for the shutdown nor disclosed any information regarding fund security, with user tickets and emails going unanswered, forming a typical runaway script of "funds leave first, people disappear later."

BitForex's Business Model and Compliance Packaging

● High returns linked to high-risk tokens: BitForex initially focused on high-leverage contracts + new small-cap altcoins, launching a large number of high-volatility assets and attracting bullish sentiment and high-frequency trading funds through activities like "double potential coins," "IEOs," and "limited-time mining."
● OTC and fiat entry: The platform provided OTC channels for multiple fiat currencies and collaborated with several third-party payment institutions to offer users services such as USDT over-the-counter trading and credit card purchases, further lowering the entry threshold for retail investors.
● Claimed compliance with multiple regional licenses: BitForex emphasized on its website and marketing materials that it held several crypto-related licenses or registration qualifications in various regions, but Research Brief pointed out that these qualifications were mostly at the registration and filing level, not strict trading licenses + customer asset regulatory requirements, indicating limited actual regulatory strength.
● Lack of transparency in user asset custody: The platform has never introduced third-party custody or on-chain transparent reserve audits, with very few asset proofs disclosed, mostly maintaining the appearance of normal inflows and outflows through internal cold/hot wallet transfers.
● High commission agent and rebate model: BitForex designed a high-percentage invitation rebate and agent program, with some regional agents receiving rebates close to 50% of fees, stimulating a large number of "KOL pump + signal" type traffic, allowing the platform to quickly gain a massive retail user base.
● Deep binding of market making and "project party recharge": Many small-cap projects have been reported to require high listing fees and market-making deposits to "list on BitForex," with some even using tokens and USDT raised by the platform on behalf of project parties, forming a gray structure with a high degree of binding between projects and platform funds.

Suspicions of a "Professional Runaway" Team

● Multiple identities of core figures: Research Brief indicated that the actual controllers or key operational members of BitForex had held important positions in multiple exchanges or crypto projects, with their identities appearing in public materials using aliases, English names, and Chinese names interchangeably, increasing the difficulty for outsiders to trace.
● Overlap with multiple "problem exchanges": Link analysis and cross-referenced information show that team members had appeared in the backgrounds of at least two small to medium exchanges that subsequently collapsed or ceased operations, serving roles such as advisors, technical partners, or early investors.
● Similar operational and collapse rhythms: These platforms exhibited a development path characterized by:
● Early rapid expansion through high rebates, high leverage, and new small-cap coins;
● Mid-term occurrences of withdrawal delays, upgraded risk controls, and inexplicable system maintenance;
● Late-stage sudden shutdowns and disappearances under large fund outflows and community panic.
● Similar "disappearance" patterns of team members: In BitForex and several historical problematic platforms, the social media accounts of team executives showed phenomena such as synchronized inactivity, default profile picture changes, and cleared bios, with some LinkedIn and Telegram accounts being deleted.
● Similar cross-platform fund trajectories: On-chain analysis shows that large outflows from BitForex's hot wallets were partially linked to address clusters associated with historical problematic exchanges, although it cannot be directly proven to be controlled by the same team, the highly similar fund layering and money laundering paths have raised external vigilance.
● Clear characteristics of "professional runaway": Combining time control, fund scheduling, and information blockade rhythms, this incident presented:
● First moving funds, then shutting down services, and finally completely disappearing;
● Fund escape using a sophisticated model of multi-chain, multi-layer, and multi-jump transfers;
● Complete silence towards users and media, leaving no grounds for accountability.

User Losses and On-Chain Fund Clues

● Affected users cover multiple regions: Users from Southeast Asia, the CIS region, and some Chinese-speaking communities concentrated on social media to report that their assets were locked in BitForex wallets, with individual account losses ranging from thousands of USDT to hundreds of thousands of USDT.
● On-chain asset scale statistics: On-chain tracking results cited by Research Brief show:
● On February 23, the total assets transferred out from BitForex's associated addresses amounted to approximately $57 million;
● In the week prior to the incident's exposure, the overall balance of BitForex's hot wallets had already shown a significant downward trend, reflecting a stable net outflow.
● Asset splitting and laundering paths:
● Some BTC and ETH were directed to large exchange deposit addresses or mixing service-related addresses after multiple transfers;
● Some USDT was transferred across chains between the Ethereum and Tron networks, accompanied by frequent address changes to weaken tracking clues;
● Small-cap tokens were batch-converted into high-liquidity assets and then uniformly transferred out.
● Difficulties in user rights protection: Since BitForex is not registered in a highly regulated jurisdiction, and most users registered via email with relatively loose KYC, current rights protection faces:
● Difficulty in identifying accountable legal entities and judicial jurisdictions;
● Information among users being dispersed and lacking unified organization;
● Real loss amounts cannot be systematically tallied in the short term.
● No authoritative agency has intervened to disclose: As of the formation of Research Brief, no mainstream regulatory agency or law enforcement department had issued formal announcements or updates on asset freezes regarding the BitForex incident, with the on-chain fund trajectory completely in a "black box tracking" phase.

Industry Trust Fractures and Regulatory Vacuum

The concentrated outflow and disappearance of BitForex is not an isolated "case runaway," but rather the result of a long-term resonance of regulatory vacuum + pseudo-compliance packaging + profit-seeking user mentality. In an environment lacking systematic audits and custody, small and medium trading platforms can easily attract large amounts of funds through high-yield narratives and short-term incentives, yet bear almost no fiduciary obligations equivalent to traditional finance. This structural imbalance means that every "runaway" is not only the collapse of a single platform but also a continuous erosion of the overall trust foundation in the industry: retail investors still have a significantly insufficient understanding of the risks associated with centralized platforms, while some teams replicate and iterate on "professional runaway templates" in gray areas.

Divergence of Bull and Bear Views and Repricing of Centralized Exchanges

● Optimistic/supporting side: They believe the BitForex incident mainly impacts marginal platforms, and that leading exchanges will benefit from reserve proofs, compliance layouts, and brand accumulation, with funds further concentrating in a few giants; in the long run, this is a "bad money clearing" that raises the overall industry threshold and risk control standards.
● Pessimistic/opposing side: They worry that similar incidents will lead retail investors to develop deep distrust of the entire centralized exchange model, accelerating fund exits or extreme shifts towards self-custody on-chain; at the same time, regulators may adopt a "one-size-fits-all" tightening approach under public pressure, causing compliance costs to soar and squeezing the space for small and medium innovations, leading to a decline in overall ecological diversity.

In the short term, the market will focus on further on-chain tracking progress of BitForex's fund chain, potential team exposures, and whether there will be regulatory intervention at key nodes. On one hand, the ability to identify and freeze some suspicious funds on mainstream trading platforms or on-chain service providers will affect the extent to which final user losses can be recovered; on the other hand, if more cross-referenced clues behind past "problem platforms" are clarified, it may promote the establishment of early warning and blacklist mechanisms targeting "professional runaway teams" within the industry. For ordinary users, how to make a more rational trade-off between the temptation of high returns and platform security is the most realistic question this incident leaves for the market.

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