Bitfinex, currently the largest cryptocurrency Exchange in terms of daily volume, is in the news again due to some operational glitches. The company's social media platforms are flooded with margin trading customers complaining that their orders have been liquidated at bottom prices.
Though many are claiming that the exchange is responsible for this, the exact reason is not yet known. Bitfinex has not released an official statement addressing the issue.
Angry traders took to Twitter and Reddit to share their experiences. According to the complaints, even stop-loss orders were liquidated at a much lower price than they should have been.
If it is an issue with the platform, and chances are it is, Bitfinex should make a prompt refund to the affected clients.
The platform has encountered some huge flash crash issues as well over the last 24 hours. The affected currencies include NEO, OMG, and ETP. The price of NEO dropped from $37 to $3, and margin traders of those tokens were severely hit as the stop-loss mechanism did not work.
Bitfinex has been involved in a number of controversies lately. A few days back, the platform announced suffering a DDoS attack which began during scheduled maintenance earlier that day, but did not bother to provide an update afterwards.
There was also the recent Tether hack. As pointed out by the German news website T3n.de, Bitfinex CEO Jan Ludovicus van der Velde and Chief Strategy Officer Phil Potter are also the CEO and the director of Tether respectively. The link between the two firms raises many questions which are yet to be answered.
Last year the platform also endured the second largest hack in cryptocurrency history, with $72 million worth of customer money stolen. Afterwards, the platform had to introduce the BFX token to compensate the victims.
Bitfinex should take steps to address the current issues immediately. The opaque operation of the platform is raising more and more suspicion, and problems with such a large Cryptocurrency Exchange will affect the entire crypto economy.
