Customers of Ukraine-based crypto exchange Liqui woke up Monday morning to the news that the exchange is shutting down. An announcement on the exchange’s website cited lack of liquidity as the reason.

Liqui Closes Up Shop

In what some are speculating will be the first of many crypto exchanges to close up shop in 2019, Ukranian cryptocurrency exchange Liqui announced this morning that they would be ceasing operations in the face of the platform’s inability to provide adequate liquidity for its users.

The shutdown comes roughly a month after Liqui made some significant changes to its Terms of Use (ToU). After giving its customers “the right to decide whether you want to be with us in our Crypto Exchange journey by accepting the changes,” it appears that many of them decided to withdraw their tokens and do their trading elsewhere.

The announcement not-so-subtly implies that it was this defection that resulted in the exchange’s current predicament:

Much to our regret, after this step Liqui is no longer able to provide liquidity for the Users left. We also do not see any economic point in providing you with our services. However, we do not want to return to where we were a month ago. Hence, we decided to close all accounts and stop providing our services. It broke our hearts to do that.

Coupled with the recent ToU change and a slew of asset delistings, the announcement has more than a few people wondering if it is merely an exit scam.

Users are being given 30 days to withdraw their digital assets, adding that they cannot guarantee that they will be maintaining the website past that point. Anyone who misses the withdrawal window can contact Liqui’s customer support for assistance.

Users Report Problems Withdrawing Assets

News of Liqui’s pending closure sparked a stampede of users trying to withdraw funds from the platform and nothing is going smoothly. There are already a number of reports from users on Twitter of accounts being prematurely closed, withdrawals of certain tokens not working, and the inability of users to view their balances.

https://twitter.com/superfred2000/status/1089920488200175619

https://twitter.com/superfred2000/status/1089916424582324224

#USDT won't send because a warning comes up "Unable to verify if address correct." Tried various USDT addresses- must be on #Liqui side — Rolling Paradox (@ParadoxRolling) January 28, 2019

And last, but certainly not least, this is what I saw when I logged in to my own account and tried to view my non-existent balances:

It has been doing this for the past three hours.

Are you running into problems withdrawing tokens from Liqui? Let us know in the comments below.

Images courtesy of ThinkStock, Liqui