exchange

Bitforex was a cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2017, registered in Seychelles and operating under a Hong Kong address, which collapsed in February 2024 after approximately $56.5 million was drained from its hot wallets across Ethereum, Tron, and Bitcoin in a controlled fund extraction widely characterized as an exit scam. The exchange had a documented history of wash trading allegations dating to 2018, a prior unexplained withdrawal freeze in 2022, regulatory warnings from Japan's FSA and Hong Kong's SFC, and operated without a license in the jurisdictions it claimed as home. Following the collapse, team members were allegedly detained by Jiangsu Province police in China, and the exchange briefly reopened for KYC-verified withdrawals in July 2024 before announcing permanent closure.

TradeOgre was an unregistered, no-KYC cryptocurrency exchange founded around 2018 and known for listing privacy coins including Monero (XMR) and Pirate Chain. On September 18, 2025, the RCMP executed Canada's largest-ever cryptocurrency seizure, dismantling the platform and seizing over CAD $56 million (approximately USD $40 million) in digital assets. Investigators determined that the majority of funds transacted on the platform came from criminal sources, including ransomware proceeds, darknet market activity, hacking exploits, and fraud schemes.

Wallex is an Iranian cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2018 in Tehran by graduates of Sharif University of Technology, serving approximately 1 million users as of 2022 and operating as a major domestic crypto-to-rial on/off-ramp. On March 25, 2026, blockchain investigator ZachXBT flagged suspicious fund consolidation activity, prompting both Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC) to simultaneously blacklist Wallex-linked wallet addresses, leaving approximately $2.49 million stranded on-chain. Wallex operates in a jurisdiction under comprehensive U.S. OFAC sanctions, has been linked by Chainalysis to transactions with a U.S.-sanctioned individual, and suffered a confirmed data breach in 2021 that exposed user credentials.

Noones is a peer-to-peer cryptocurrency trading platform targeting Africa and the Global South, founded and initially led by Ray Youssef, co-founder of the now-defunct Paxful. In January 2025, the platform suffered an $8 million hot-wallet exploit that was concealed for nearly three weeks before on-chain investigator ZachXBT publicly exposed the breach. Compounding platform risk, Youssef was subsequently indicted by the DOJ in early 2026 on federal AML charges stemming from his leadership of Paxful, and stepped down as Noones CEO shortly thereafter.

BtcTurk is Turkey's oldest and largest centralized cryptocurrency exchange, founded in 2013 in Istanbul. The exchange has suffered two major hot wallet breaches in 14 months — approximately $55 million stolen in June 2024 and approximately $48–$49 million in August 2025 — both attributed to private key compromise, establishing a pattern of repeated critical security failures. Despite operating under Turkish regulatory frameworks (CMB and MASAK) and maintaining cold wallet protections, the exchange's inability to prevent a second near-identical attack within a year raises serious concerns about the adequacy of its security controls.

Crypto.com is a Singapore-headquartered centralized cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2016 (originally as Monaco) by Kris Marszalek, Bobby Bao, Gary Or, and Rafael Melo. The platform has been subject to multiple serious security incidents, including a confirmed January 2022 hack in which $34 million was stolen via a 2FA bypass and laundered through Tornado Cash, and an alleged 2023 data breach linked to the Scattered Spider hacking group that the company did not publicly disclose to affected users. Blockchain investigator ZachXBT has publicly accused Crypto.com of governance manipulation and tokenomics fraud, citing the March 2025 reissuance of 70 billion CRO tokens that had been permanently burned in 2021, and the company's controversial 2020 forced swap from its original MCO token to CRO at unfavorable rates.

CoinEx is a centralized cryptocurrency exchange that suffered a major hot wallet breach on September 12, 2023, with losses estimated between $54 million and $70 million across multiple blockchains. On-chain investigators ZachXBT and Elliptic attributed the attack to the Lazarus Group (TraderTraitor), a North Korean state-sponsored threat actor, based on wallet address overlap with the contemporaneous Stake.com hack. Stolen proceeds were subsequently laundered in part through the Sinbad Bitcoin mixer, which was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury's OFAC on November 29, 2023.

BitoPro is a Taiwanese centralized cryptocurrency exchange operated by BitoGroup, serving over 800,000 users with TWD (New Taiwan Dollar) fiat on/off-ramps. On May 8, 2025, the exchange suffered an approximately $11.5 million hot wallet theft attributed to North Korea's Lazarus Group via a social-engineering and AWS-token-hijacking attack. The exchange did not publicly disclose the breach for approximately 25 days, only confirming the incident after on-chain investigator ZachXBT flagged suspicious outflows on June 2, 2025.

M2 is a UAE-based cryptocurrency exchange licensed by the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM) Financial Services Regulatory Authority, operating as a regulated Multilateral Trading Facility and custodian since late 2023. On October 31, 2024, the exchange suffered a $13.7 million hot wallet breach attributed to an access control vulnerability across the Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana networks. M2 subsequently reimbursed all affected customers from its own assets and stated it had engaged law enforcement and regulatory authorities.

CoinSpot is an Australian cryptocurrency exchange founded in 2013 by Russell Wilson and headquartered in Melbourne. It is registered with AUSTRAC as a Digital Currency Exchange (since May 2018) and holds ISO 27001 certification. On November 8, 2023, the platform suffered a suspected private key compromise resulting in the loss of approximately 1,283 ETH (~$2.4 million USD), with stolen funds bridged to Bitcoin via THORChain and Wan Bridge. No customer funds were reported lost in the incident.