Crypto Trading Platform Hotbit Halts Services Amid Investigation of Former Employee

Cryptocurrency trading platform Hotbit announced on August 10 that it would suspend trading, deposits, withdrawals and funding functions, without specifying the exact time of their resumption.

To explain the decision, Hotbit claimed that a former management employee who left the company in April was involved in a project last year that law enforcement authorities now suspect violated the law. Hotbit has stated that the project contradicted the firm’s internal principles and that it was not aware at the time.

Therefore, a number of Hotbit senior managers have been subpoenaed by law enforcement since the end of July and are assisting in the investigation. Furthermore, law enforcement has frozen some of Hotbit’s funds, which has prevented the platform from running normally.

Hotbit is registered in Hong Kong and Estonia, with most of its staff from the Chinese mainland, Taiwan and the US, according to its website.

Hotbit believes that the platform itself and the rest of its management staff are not involved in the project and have no knowledge of any related illegal activity.

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In an effort to ease crypto holders’ panic, Hotbit affirmed that all assets are safe on the platform. Hotbit will resume normal services as soon as the assets are unfrozen and will announce the results of the investigation as soon as they are available.

Several days before this suspension of services, Hotbit was scheduled to list TFOX (Triangle Flow of X Token) on its Global Section. However, ListingSpy, a new crypto token listing aggregator on PancakeSwap, Uniswap and other top DEX CEX, found on August 5 that after listing, this “shitcoin’s” market cap went higher than ETH and even BTC, then declined and was wash traded. The token price chart looked ridiculous, ListingSpy noted. The token’s price has since gone down to about $1 now, according to crypto data site Nomics.