BitForex: $56.5M Left the Hot Wallets, the Site Went Dark Three Days Later

I. What this exchange actually was

BitForex was a centralised crypto exchange that described itself as based in Hong Kong. In its press release of March 4, 2024, Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission stated that BitForex had neither been licensed by the SFC nor applied to it for a licence. According to CoinDesk, its former CEO Jason Luo announced in January 2024 that he was stepping down after six years, and Japanese regulators had flagged the exchange in 2023 for operating without a licence.

II. Those few days in February 2024

The timeline below lists only the checkpoints that can be matched against a public record.

III. What the public record showed beforehand

Looking back, two things were already public before any of this happened. Held up against the eight risk signals in the Exchange Safety Check, both fall under "the licence cannot be found":

• No Hong Kong licence. It described itself as Hong Kong-based, but it was not on the SFC's public list of licensed virtual asset trading platforms. The SFC later said so in its warning.
• Already flagged by another regulator. According to CoinDesk, Japanese regulators had flagged BitForex in 2023 for operating without a licence.

Neither of those requires inside information; both can be found in the ten or fifteen minutes before you send money. They do not tell you which day something will go wrong. They are enough to make you think twice before parking a large sum there.

IV. The withdrawal statement five months later

According to CoinDesk's report of July 19, 2024, BitForex posted a statement on X that day: on February 23, 2024 its team was detained and investigated by police in Jiangsu Province, China, which made the platform inaccessible and left users unable to withdraw from that day; it would now open withdrawals for users who complete identity verification (KYC), keep trading and deposits suspended, and cease all operations once assets had been returned to users.

The statement did not mention the roughly $56.5 million that left the hot wallets on February 23. So the public record, as it stands, is several pieces laid side by side: the on-chain outflow ZachXBT saw; CoinDesk's contemporaneous "unclear whether a hacker or the team"; the Hong Kong SFC's "suspected fraud" warning; and BitForex's own account that its team had been detained. Where that money ended up, and whether users get back everything they are owed, is something none of these sources answers.

The practical advice for an ordinary user: do not send money back in because of a "withdrawals are open" post, and treat any private message that wants you to pay a fee, pass a verification or make a deposit before you can recover old assets as a scam. Real recovery runs through a police report and the legal process, not through wiring anyone one more payment.

V. What this leaves an ordinary user with

BitForex was nowhere near the size of FTX, but for anyone with money inside the outcome was no different: withdrawals stopped without notice, and the site stayed dark for five months.

Everything you can do about that happens before the transfer: where your assets sit is decided in the ten minutes before you send them, not in the recovery group chat afterwards. Put that self-check to work — can the licence be traced, is there a proof of reserves you can verify yourself, are withdrawals slowing. For the more systematic version of how to pick a venue, see Archaeology · Lesson Two · From Mt.Gox to FTX: Shared Warning Signs Before 8 Exchange and Lending-Platform Failures.