The price of XRP/BTC recently crashed due to a coordinated sell-off and exploit on the new exchange Beaxy. All trading activity and withdrawals have been halted.

Cryptocurrency exchange Beaxy, which launched only in June, is facing controversy after its XRP/BTC trading pairs plummeted due to a sell-off by a coordinated group. The cryptocurrency dropped 40% relative to BTC during the attack. So far, the perpetrators are still unknown.

Beaxy claims that other exchanges were also targeted with an “XRP partial payment exploit.” The exchange says that thanks to its mandatory KYC practices, the perpetrators will be easily identified. All funds misappropriated will be returned and any relevant trades will be rolled back.

However, no other exchange seems to have suffered such an attack. This has caused some users to doubt Beaxy’s official explanation, with one user (@Mr_HvD) harshly claiming it was due to the exchange’s own negligence. Many others voiced similar criticisms, pointing figures at the exchange’s devs for failing to properly follow basic protocol.

With its mandatory KYC practices, Beaxy hoped to eat up some of Binance’s trading volume after the American ban goes into effect in September. However, this entire fiasco is sure to put a damper on Beaxy’s aggressive efforts to compete, even though the exchange has still failed to reach a critical mass of trading volume even before this scandal.

Before its release in June, the exchange suffered an employee hack which luckily did not materialize into anything serious. Still, since then, the exchange has been shrouded in suspicion and the recent XRP exploit only adds fuel to the fire.

Beaxy is currently suspending all trading and withdrawals on the exchange until the situation is fully accounted for. We can likely expect the platform to be operational again sometime this week, but the blow to its reputation will take some weeks to revive. At least it isn’t faking trading volumes, however.

Do you believe Beaxy still has the potential to be a top exchange or is that chance quickly dwindling? Let us know your thoughts in the comments down below.

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