Zipmex Outlines Plan to Allow Some Customer Withdrawals

The exchange added that it was “exploring all available channels including “fundraising, legal action, and restructuring” in a Thursday statement. 

Zipmex Shares Update Amid Crisis 

Zipmex has thrown its customers a lifeline. 

The Asian crypto exchange published an update on its liquidity issues Thursday, saying it would be re-enabling customer withdrawals and deposits through its Trade Wallet feature. The exchange announced Wednesday that it had frozen all withdrawals due to volatile market conditions, effectively blocking customers from accessing their funds. 

Zipmex said in a tweet that it would allow deposits and withdrawals in Trade Wallets from 17:00 UTC today. However, it added that trading would remain suspended. In a separate now-deleted statement published on the firm’s social media channels this morning, the exchange cited “the black swan events surrounding the crypto space” and said that it was working to resolve the situation. The statement read:

“Zipmex has retrieved the majority of our funds and assets that were historically deposited with our deployment partners and have been actively working to resolve the situation for the remaining outstanding assets. There were no materially adverse impacts to our operations.”  

The same statement clarified that Zipmex had $48 million worth of exposure to Babel Finance and $5 million to Celsius, two crypto lenders that suffered hard hits as the market plummeted in June. Both Babel and Celsius froze customer withdrawals as they contended with their own liquidity crises; Celsius has since filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and customers are still unable to retrieve their assets. 

Zipmex also outlined a recovery plan in the deleted statement, saying it was “exploring all available channels including fundraising, legal action, and restructuring.” For now, ZipUp and Z Wallet transfers are on pause. 

“Our first priority is to our users and we are doing everything in our power to restore all functionality on the platform while being as transparent as possible,” the statement added. Crypto Briefing reached out to the firm to ask why the statement was deleted, but had not received a response at press time. 

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.