BTC-e Is Back Online, But Refund Efforts Are Anything But Smooth

BTC-e announced late last week that it would begin allowing cryptocurrency withdrawals – though it's not clear at this time how many users have gotten their money out since the weekend.

Signs on social media suggest that some users have been able to withdraw their funds. As CoinDesk reported on Friday, BTC-e announced that, if they were willing to accept a plan to accept just over half of their existing holdings in return for so-called debt tokens following a pending relaunch, users could begin taking their money off of the exchange.

Postings on Twitter, as well as the BTC-e chatbox, indicate that a number of customers opted to keep their funds on the exchange itself, under the premise that would presumably recoup all of their money at a later date.

Yet more immediately, social media signs show, many users seem to be having persistent issues in accessing either their accounts or a refund page launched by BTC-e. Some seem to be encountering issues with their accounts being blacklisted from the BTC-e website, while others are reporting problems related to their two-factor authentication (2FA) settings.

Complicating factors are reports that scammers are targeting BTC-e users with phishing attempts. According to one post on Twitter, an email is circulating that directs readers to a fake refund form through which their access credentials can be stolen.

BTC-e was the target of a US crackdown in late July, an event which saw one of its alleged operators arrested and the exchange itself slapped with a $110 million fine from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). In the aftermath of that crackdown, representatives for the exchange vowed to relaunch BTC-e after claiming to possess just over half of the funds it originally held.

Notably, BTC-e is reportedly distributing holdings of Bitcoin Cash to users, according to a new tweet, referring to the breakaway cryptocurrency that "forked" away from bitcoin at the start of August.

The exchange had received a number of requests related to Bitcoin Cash, a notable development given that the network took shape in the days after BTC-e's original Web domain was seized by law enforcement.