Hong-Kong based crypto exchange Bitfinex today provided an update regarding blocked USD withdrawals. Previously noted, last month, US correspondent banks of its Taiwan banking providers initiated the block of international wires, and as of today, this is still on-going.
The Bitfinex team says that USD continues to flow domestically in Taiwan and other channels have been slowly coming online, as evidenced by the price spreads narrowing between Bitfinex and other exchanges.
They further said that solutions available at the moment are limited to specific customer profiles in certain jurisdictions, and they are working to expand deposit and withdrawal options (including support for other fiat currencies) to meet the needs of global customers.” If and when a customer qualifies for one of these channels, Bitfinex will reach out to those customers directly.
Bitfinex also reported to have moved the majority of its funds out of Taiwan and the one-time withdrawal solution discussed in an earlier announcement is coming online.
The Bitfinex team left with the following statement:
“Unfortunately, due to the cumbersome nature of the settlement procedure, we are processing these requests in descending order of size as we learn how to handle the process more efficiently. For the time being, we will only process requests above $50,000 in size.”
“We believe that by the time we are able to get to the smaller withdrawals, other, less cumbersome withdrawal solutions will become more widely available. If you are interested in this option, please submit a normal withdrawal request and reference in a support ticket with subject ‘USD settlement request’ – we will contact you when we are ready to process that withdrawal.”
“We are deeply grateful for the patience and forbearance that our customers and shareholders have shown us as we work to restore normal operations. We apologize for the inconvenience and look forward to resolving these problems in the coming weeks.”
Last week, Bitfinex announced they brought on-board auditor Friedman LLP for a full balance sheet review, which will be made public in the near future.