On 26 July 2026 BitMart announces an orderly wind-down: generous deadlines, a clear calendar, no panic. Three weeks later the exchange’s own official Chinese account carries an open letter to its own founder, with five demands and a deadline. The founder replies that the account has been hacked. In between sit thousands of users who simply want their money back.
The orderly wind-down
The announcement lands on a Sunday morning. BitMart, active since 2017 and for years a mid-sized name in the second tier of crypto exchanges, says it is stopping. New registrations closed, deposits closed, futures switched to reduce-only, spot no longer accepting new orders. Trading stops on 26 August 2026; the platform closes for good on 31 January 2027.
As a reason the exchange cites business conditions, the market climate and future strategic direction. No insolvency, no hack, no enforcement action. On paper this is how it is supposed to be done: plenty of time, clear dates, users can close their positions and withdraw their money.
It sits awkwardly with what the company said nine days earlier. In its half-year report of 17 July, BitMart still reported roughly 256% growth in assets under management versus the previous quarter, a new prediction-market product and an Australian licence obtained in June. A company that describes itself that way does not simply shut the door nine days later.
The money that did not follow
The calendar was generous. The payouts were not. Within days users report that withdrawals hang, that verification drags on endlessly, that requests stall without explanation. Analytics firm Lookonchain counted 58 wallets in the first 24 hours after the announcement, withdrawing about $805,000 in total, including an eight-hour stretch in which not a single request was processed. The exchange’s own token, BMX, lost more than 80% of its value in a week.
In mid-August a figure arrives that tips the mood for good. Researchers tracking wallets linked to BitMart watch the balance fall from roughly $70–100 million to about $36.5 million. That is not proof of theft — an exchange that pays people out will by definition see its wallets drain. But it is exactly the kind of number you do not want to leave unexplained while your customers are saying they cannot get at their funds.
At the same time, reports circulate of unpaid staff salaries. unverified
On 8 August founder Sheldon Xia responds publicly for the first time. He denies that the exchange has absconded or misused funds, says the team is taking stock, and that courts and independent auditors may be brought in.
The letter from its own account
Then something happens that this industry rarely sees. On 17 August, an extended open letter appears on @BitMart_zh — the exchange’s own official Chinese account. Not addressed to users, but to the founder. On behalf of users and staff.
The letter makes five demands:
- Disclosure of wallets, assets, liabilities and available reserves — verifiable by third parties.
- An explanation of why withdrawals were blocked, and who decided that.
- An investigation into accounts that may be linked to management.
- Immediate payment of outstanding salaries and compensation.
- A concrete, audited repayment plan with a timeline.
The deadline: 19 August. Without an answer, the evidence would go to regulators, police, lawyers and the media. The letter tags CZ, Justin Sun, Vitalik Buterin, WuBlockchain and ZachXBT, among others — a way of making sure it does not quietly disappear.
An exchange that issues an ultimatum to its own founder through its own account does not have a communications problem. It has a trust problem.
The sharpest passage
Up to this point it is a business conflict: numbers, wallets, a repayment plan. But the letter does not stay businesslike. Halfway through, it turns to Yi Li — also known as Nancy Li — the founder’s partner.
The authors point at her social media: luxury watches, expensive wine, diamond rings, high-end hotels. They are the first to say that this on its own proves nothing. Living in luxury is not a crime, the letter states in as many words. The question they attach to it is a different one, and it is unmistakable: there are said to be BitMart accounts linked to her holding tens of millions of dollars, from which withdrawals were made in batches. Do those accounts exist? Whose money is it? Where did it come from? And — the question it really turns on — is it user money? unverified
Let there be no confusion: no evidence has been produced for those linked accounts, not in the letter and not outside it. It is an accusation, not a finding. But it is the passage that turned the conflict from an accounting dispute into a personal reckoning — and it is precisely the kind of question that a verifiable statement of assets would answer in one go.
“Hacked”
Xia’s response does not take long. He calls the posts fabricated rumours, says he has gathered evidence, will file a police report and will send a lawyer to X for a forensic investigation. Staff, he adds, will not be given priority over customers.
Shortly afterwards comes the statement that makes the conflict permanently unresolvable: the official Chinese account was hacked, and the posts did not come from current employees.
That leaves two irreconcilable readings side by side. Either the account was taken over by outsiders, in which case the letter is not an internal signal but an attack. Or the letter came from inside, in which case management has lost control of its own channels. For the user waiting on their money it makes little difference: in both cases there is no audited repayment plan. conflicting accounts
ZachXBT weighs in
On-chain investigator ZachXBT — in this industry roughly the last resort for people with nowhere else to go — responds immediately. His point is disarmingly simple: if the liquidity is there, just give everyone their money back instead of posting vague statements. He adds that BitMart’s conduct has cost real people access to their funds, with remarkably little transparency.
Earlier he had been harsher about the wider pattern: anyone still using an offshore “bucket shop” exchange in 2026 instead of a top-5 venue is partly to blame themselves.
The empty chairs around it
What stands out around the row is mostly who is no longer there. Nathan Chow, the global CEO, was dismissed on 24 July — two days before the announcement. He publicly stated that he was not involved in the closure decision and learned of it through the official announcement.
Co-founder Terence Lee stepped away from all company matters as of 31 July. In a statement on 12 August he writes that in recent years he was not responsible for the core exchange and had no authority over assets or user funds. He also complains that his ID, photographs and false information about him are being circulated.
In the market that exit was immediately read as a signal. Commentator Travladd summed it up as it “screams insolvency”: a co-founder stepping back just before the storm breaks. interpretation
An exchange whose CEO has just been dismissed, whose co-founder is withdrawing and whose staff are raising the alarm through the company account had already fallen apart at the governance level before the first deadline arrived.
On top of that comes a promise never kept: BitMart was to publish a proof of reserves in May 2026. That report never appeared. unverified It is precisely such a report that would now settle the discussion in a single move.
What else is going around
A second layer of stories always forms around an exchange that stalls: things said by affected users and market participants that nobody has substantiated. They belong in the picture, and they belong with a label. unverified
- 27 larger accounts are said to have more than $3.7 million stuck between them.
- Market maker Open Gradient (Matthew Wang) publicly accused BitMart of insolvency, saying the exchange asked token holders to lock up their tokens a week before the closure was announced.
- VIP managers are said to have removed customers from Telegram groups when withdrawals stalled.
- Cayman Islands regulator CIMA is said to have stated that BitMart/GBM was never licensed there.
None of these points has been confirmed by BitMart; the exchange disputes the reporting in general terms. They are here because they shape the picture in which users are making their decisions — not because they are established.
The clock that keeps running
The 19 August deadline passed without the plan that was demanded. What does not pass is the exchange’s own calendar. On 26 August 2026, 01:00 UTC all trading stops — spot and derivatives. Withdrawal requests can still be submitted until 05:00 UTC the same day. After that the platform stays open until 31 January 2027, but without a market.
For anyone still holding funds there, that is the only number that really counts. Not who is right in the argument, but how many days are left.
What BitMart shows
The pattern is familiar from every exchange that quietly empties out: the calendar is tidy, the communication is calm, and the withdrawals are slow. A calendar costs nothing. Paying people out does.
What makes this case different is that the alarm did not come from outside but from within — through the company account itself. And that the one test which could have settled it, a verifiable overview of assets and obligations, is exactly the thing that is missing.
That is the lesson that reaches beyond BitMart: do not ask whether an exchange says your money is there, but whether anyone has independently checked — and when they last did.
Sources
Open letter, the five demands and the 19 August deadline; the response from founder Sheldon Xia (“fabricated rumours”, the hacking claim) and the reports of unpaid salaries: CoinDesk, CoinGape, The Crypto Times. Decline of wallets linked to BitMart from ~$71m to ~$36.5m: AMBCrypto. ZachXBT’s response: NullTX, X. Wind-down calendar and closing dates: BitMart’s official announcement. Open letter and response in the original: @BitMart_zh, @sheldonbitmart. The accusations in the open letter — including those about accounts linked to management — have not been independently confirmed and are disputed by BitMart; passages containing unverified claims are marked as such.