By
Bena Ilyas
April 25th, 2024
It is estimated that the Thodex exchange has shut down with between $2-10 billion of investors’ hard-earned money irretrievable.
Some cryptocurrency investors are in a state of shock after another exchange based in Turkey pulled an exit scam, according to reports, Thodex has vanished out of thin air without notice with the investments of over 391,000 people locked up.
It is estimated that the Thodex exchange has shut down with between $2-10 billion of investors’ hard-earned money irretrievable. For now, the exchange has not made any official announcement about the situation on the ground, but activities surrounding the key players of the platform raise alarm about their intention.
It started when Thodex posted on their Twitter handle about their intention to improve customer satisfaction by the introduction of a Peer-to-Peer cryptocurrency investment service from outside. Thodex in another statement notified customers that they would suspend their trading activities for 4 to 5 days. However, the CEO of Thodex Faruk Fatih Ozer has deleted his social media account and disappeared without a trace.
Önemli Bilgilendirme 👉 https://t.co/8DPOzm2pOX pic.twitter.com/Bg0cfuBLDB
— THODEX (@thodexofficial) April 21, 2021
It is suspected that the whole scheme was planned as the company introduced a program from March 15 to April 15 to attract more customers by freely giving out 150 Doge to new users who signed up within the period.
Oguz Evren Kilic, the lawyer who represents the unspecified number of customers has confirmed to have filed a legal complaint against the exchange, and the prosecutor of Istanbul has launched an investigation into the alleged exit scam.
Kilic alleged that the CEO of the Thodex exchange has fled from Turkey through a commercial flight on Wednesday. Other reports speculate that Fatih has fled to Albania. It is important to know that the cryptocurrency market has long been associated with crime.
Many believe that the decentralized asset acts as a tool for money laundering with the so-called exchanges taking advantage of its boom to scam enthusiasts. For this reason, the Turkish officials have called for a fast regulation of the market especially in this time where global crime associated with the industry is rising.
According to the senior economic advisor to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Cemil Ertem, a cryptocurrency-related pyramid scheme has been rampant in the area, hence the need for the government to put measures in place.
Ertem stated that beyond doubt, the country will take action against the recent industry occurrence by putting regulations in place based on the level of its economy. This being said, they will do this by monitoring global development.
Not only Thodex, but also many cryptocurrency exchanges have pulled an exit scam since Bitcoin started going mainstream. The ones that had no prior motive to shutdown operations were forced to do so after losing millions of dollars to hackers who got access to their administrative panel like MT.Gox.