FCoin, the Chinese exchange which recently announced it would be suddenly shutting its doors, leaving its investors out in the cold, has now announced that it will be taking steps to not only resume its business, but also pay back the millions of dollars it owes.

FCoin has garnered a bad reputation since it began trading and suddenly shot to the upper echelons of trading volumes which many pointed out sounded too good to be true. This even led to Binance head, Changpeng Zhao calling out the exchange as a Ponzi scheme.

“I rarely called out anyone, with exceptions. On Chinese social media, I called FCoin a pyramid scheme in mid-2018. Their founder calls his own plan a “better invention than #Bitcoin”. That did it for me. Who would say such a thing? About themselves? Except scammers,” he recently tweeted.

However, the latest from the exchange seems to suggest they have had a change of heart and are looking to do right after their insolvency call of only a few weeks ago. According to FCoin’s community page, the existing team will resume the operation of the FCoin and FMex websites, handing them over to an “interim committee” led by community representatives.

From here, a compensation plan will be drawn up because as it stands, the exchange is set to owe its users in the range of 7,000 to 13,000 BTC – around $115 million at the top end. Then, once this is rectified, it has been announced that the ownership will allegedly be handed over to the community.

Fears of an exit scam

The manner in which FCoin came onto the scene, and suddenly declared insolvency, had many worried that this was yet another case of a dodgy exchange pulling an exit scam. However, the exchange maintained that this was not the reason for their decision to stop operating.

FCoin maintained it was rather a series of data and decision errors — specifically concerning proper auditing of the payouts of the platform’s transaction mining model, that led to the insolvency.

This recent announcement of course offers a lot of hope for the affected customers of FCoin, and that there might be recourse for them to get back their funds. But this promise is not yet backed by anything, and only time will really tell if things will get better.

However, there are some experts arguing that FCoin is a thinly-disguised Ponzi scheme, in addition to China’s witch hunt against cryptocurrency exchanges, its founder may find himself in legal troubles as well.