The sudden MapleChange exchange disappearance: the plot thickens

MapleChange reactivates its Twitter account – but something still isn’t adding up…

Last night came the breaking story that Canadian cryptocurrency exchange MapleChange had suddenly gone offline. Its Twitter feed had been reporting a hack, and that it wouldn’t be able to refund its users. Then, all of its social media accounts also were taken down and the exchange shut down, leading to accusations of some kind of exit scam.

However, overnight the MapleChange Twitter account has come back online, and has given a sort-of-update on what’s going on. There are still lots of questions to be answered, but as per its Twitter feed:

We have not disappeared guys. We simply turned off our accounts temporarily to think this solution through. We cannot refund everyone all their funds, but we will be opening wallets to whatever we have left so people can (hopefully) withdraw their funds.

— MapleChange (@MapleChangeEx) October 28, 2018

Further posts added that MapleChange could not refund Bitcoin or Litecoin, but that “we will try our best to refund everything else”. A room on the Discord server was being set up to process refunds. The name of that wasn’t announced. But MapleChange did add…

We are sending all of the coin developers the wallets containing the coins we have left. So far, LMO and CCX have been handed over the funds.

— MapleChange (@MapleChangeEx) October 28, 2018

Still: why did MapleChange, at a point its customers would most need communication, opt to shutter its social media accounts?

That’s the part that makes no obvious sense, and fuelled belief that something was awry. Furthermore, as this chart shows, MapleChange had been enjoying a spike in traffic over the past week, making it an opportune moment to cash out.

At least one Twitter user had suggested that the people behind the MapleChange exchange had been ‘doxxed’ (as in their details had been tracked down). Again, there’s no confirmation on this, as the plot continues to thicken.

There’s clearly more to this story yet to come. For now, at the time of writing, the MapleChange website – whose traffic had been rising – looks like this.

More as we get it.