By
Mayowa Adebajo
December 12th, 2023
BTC-e trading platform announced its official rebranding and the new exchange domain Wex.nz on September 15. In its welcome statement the company shares the details of the reopening assuring they are fully AML/KYC compliant.
Troubled BTC-e exchange, that had been displaying a breakdown for maintenance message, because of being seized by US criminal authorities almost 2 months ago, has relaunched under a new name.
Then arrest of BTC-e’s affiliate Alexander Vinnik, charged with laundering of $4 billion (95 percent of which were cashed out at the BTC-e), made exchange’s users, who had already lost access to their funds, even more worried. Later BTC-e officially declared that Alexander was never the head or employee of the exchange’s service.
Now it seems that the exchange’s users may finally sigh with relief, as accomplishing the first stage of the 3-stage process of service relaunch made public late August, BTC-e has officially reopened for users on the new domain name WEX.nz.
In their welcome statement, published on the exchange’s web-site, WEX team thanks former BTC-e’s users for their patience and indicates that they had launched the new site (using the old design though) which is to operate according to AML/KYC laws:
We thank all ex-users of BTC-E for their patience at such a difficult moment for all of you guys. We on our part have spent a lot of efforts and energy to create a new platform for trade in the shortest time limits. Our platform will operate according to AML/KYC laws and world legislation in this field.
* Speaking about AML/KYC laws, we cannot but mention, that the first and the only coin which fully complies with anti-money laundering, anti-terrorism and counter-terrorism financing laws, bank secrecy laws, know-your-customer laws, and anti-financial crimes laws both in the United States and abroad, called AML Bitcoin is reality now, which is to be launched on Oct. 1, 2017.
Back on topic, WEX also sought to differentiate itself from the BTC-e website, claiming that it is unrelated to that company, and has different technical teams behind the exchange:
We would also like to thank the technical team of btc-e for their professional help of transferring digital profiles and data of users and also want to emphasize that our company did not cooperate with BTC-E Always Efficient LLP in any way and did not receive their funds.
The statement also indicated that the site is running only in test mode to verify that transactions were registering properly, and that the withdrawals are currently limited:
Our platform will work in a test mode for general security reasons, to test how all blocks work. Daily limits will be set for withdrawal (you can find information about them in your account), they will be removed in future. Test mode will be enabled from 3 to 7 working days. After this period is over, the platform will work without limits, thank you for your kind understanding.
According to the statement, all migrated users will receive bonus cryptocurrency tokens to transfer balances as they see fit. It remains unknown how long the company will take to refund existing users, though.
“Due to a large demand among customers” the new site has opened a separate VIP section which will serve those depositing more than $100,000.
All in all, before WEX can launch trading services it must undergo an audit.
Meanwhile the team focuses on an active development of such directions as: investments, trading, arbitrage, consulting, mining, ico, and exposure of pyramids.