CoinBene Goes into ‘Unscheduled Maintenance; Ignores Hack Rumors

Once again, a crypto exchange allegedly suffered a cyber attack while others point towards a possible exit scam.
claimed on its official Twitter account that it was experiencing a maintenance, likely a preemptive hint that it had fallen victim to a hack.

Anxious traders responded to the company Tweet in the hope that the exchange had not been hacked and no balances were lost. Some clients who reported that their deposits were pending for hours were reassured by the company:

In order to enhance the user experience, CoinBene upgraded the platform wallet on March 26, 2019.
During maintenance, it will affect related operations such as deposit and withdraw, trading will not be affected.

— CoinBene Global (@CoinBene)

While the people were already furious to know about the mess, the lack of exact specifics about the ‘unscheduled maintenance’ adds fuel to the fire.
As this news propagated, the crypto community at large began to react. Crypto outlet CCN said that some insiders suggest that the maintenance announcement is a cover for a large hack that might involve up to $40 million stolen. Other crypto commentators wrote about strange activity spotted on Coinbene, while some users report that their Ethereum wallets were hacked and attach these two addresses.                               https://etherscan.io/address/0x6585329751de1140d68bd6cad1b46ebec1131f75#tokentxns
https://etherscan.io/tokentxns?a=0xb3df999c5dc026dea265aeb02b8519844c9b6d5e

claims it has initiated maintenance and wallet upgrade. Users are not convinced.

— Nick Schteringard (@schteringard)

Tokens have been moved to a wallet commented on as a “cold wallet”.

— Stephen Morrison (@HowManyMiles_)

CoinBene didn’t comment on hacking rumors but explained that it will announce in a separate statement when the maintenance has been completed. The crypto venue also confirmed all related operations such as deposit, withdrawals, trading will not be affected.
The news came up right after a study from San Francisco based Bitwise Asset Management claimed that unregulated exchanges like CoinBene inflate trading volume compared to regulated exchange like Coinbase. The study concludes that nearly 95% of all reported trading in bitcoin is artificially created.
CoinBene is currently sitting as one of the top 20 crypto exchanges worldwide. According to , it has over $580 million in 24-hour trade volume and ranked currently as the 15^th biggest crypto exchange.