The Bitfinex crypto exchange is set to halt all user services for approximately 7 hours. The exchange has indicated that the 7 hours will be used to perform activities that are geared towards improving the speed of transactions on the platform.

The 7-hour activities are set to take place on the morning of Monday the 7th. According to the Bitfinex crypto exchange, the time will be used to migrate data:

From AWS [Amazon Web Services] to private, self-hosted servers, improving platform speed, performance, and security. Both Bitfinex and Ethfinex will be down for up to 7 hours to complete the migration. Account holders will not be able to access their wallets, and all features across both platforms will be offline.

As noted by Trustnodes, Bitfinex’s private servers are located in a Swiss data center. A 7-hour lock down comes as the first longest duration a cryptocurrency exchange had to go offline for upgrades.

To gear up to this event, the Bitfinex crypto exchange has reportedly transferred close to one million ETH from one of its wallets.

However, there’s a point of concern, what about the shorts and longs? Well, traders may decide to play around with what happens within the seven hours and try to forecast the most lucrative way to follow as they wait for 7th or during the blackout period.

To be precise, during the blackout period users on the Bitfinex crypto exchange will not be able to deposit and withdraw. Additionally, the platform will not be available for spot trading, shorts or longs.

The migration exercise at Bitfinex comes a few days after a report surfaced indicating that the Bitfinex crypto exchange had not passed the Proof of Keys exam. The exchange agreed to the results but indicated all ‘funds are safe.’

What effect do you think the 7 hours the Bitfinex crypto exchange will be under lockdown have on the market?

Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below