Irish Bitsane cryptocurrency exchange has disappeared with the money of 246,000 customers

The Irish Bitsane cryptocurrency exchange has closed, and its founders disappeared along with the cryptocurrency of more than 246,000 users of the site.

According to
Forbes registered in Dublin Bitsane LP was previously listed
approved Ripple exchanges. In addition, in an article on CNBC from January 2018, the exchange was positioned as an option for investors planning to trade XRP before listing on major platforms such as Coinbase.

According to Forbes, problems with the withdrawal of users at Bitsane began in May of this year, and allegedly technical problems were cited as the cause. By June 17, both the Bitsane website and its social media accounts were deleted, and emails to Bitsane addresses were returned as undeliverable.

Moreover, during the investigation of this situation, Forbes could not contact the general director of the exchange, Aidas Rupsys, or its technical director, Dmitry Prudnikov. At the time of publication of the article Prudnikov profile on LinkedIn is also unavailable.

As of May 30, 2019, Bitsane had about 246,000 registered users, and daily trading volume was just over $ 7 million as of March 31. In groups of clients of the exchange in Telegram and Facebook it is told
about users claiming they lost an average of $ 5000. Forbes refers to an unnamed US resident who held $ 150,000 on XRP and BTC on the exchange at the time of its closure.

Further, Forbes reports on a separate company registered in the UK as Bitsane Limited by Maxim Zmitrovich in August 2017, which apparently tried to acquire intellectual rights to the Bistane code and use it as the basis for its own platform, called Azbit.

According to Zmitrovich, his company took the name Bitsane to fulfill the condition set by the developers of Bistane, but the partnership between the two companies did not take place. In the article
in a blog post earlier this month, Zmitrovich categorically denied any significant connection between Azbit and the obvious Bitsane scammers, arguing that the exchange team had not responded to his letters since April of this year.

Although Forbes notes that several US-based Bitsane users have filed complaints with the FBI, the fate of those who suffered from the disappearance of the platform is not encouraging.

Earlier this month, the Polish cryptocurrency exchange Coinroom also closed, not returning customer deposits.