‘Minor technical glitch’ at Bitbns stirs panic after customer accounts temporarily show zero balance

Several investors panicked after seeing their accounts on the Indian exchange Bitbns empty on the morning of June 27. Investors told Business Today that they woke up to find their portfolios wiped out overnight, with no INR or crypto balance.

In a tweet earlier today, Bitbns said that an issue with the overnight database upgrade caused its user balances to become nil. Bitbns CEO Gaurav Dahake told BT it was a “minor technical glitch.”

In a later tweet, the exchange said that the issue is now fixed. The exchange was offline for almost 7 hours after the issue of nil user balances was first highlighted.

According to the exchange website, while user balances should already be restored, deposits and withdrawals will go live at 7 pm IST. Some users confirmed that their accounts have started reflecting the correct balance.

However, several users also told BT they received notifications of unauthorized trades on Bitbns. Some users said that their trading history reflected that all of their cryptocurrencies were sold without authorization, although the INR proceeds of the sales did not reflect in their accounts. One user said:

“Sale of my crypto tokens is also in my trade history, but I had not conducted any of these transactions. Even after the sale is completed, the INR is also not reflected in my account,”

These unauthorized transactions led some to speculate that the exchange was potentially hacked, although Dahake said there was no “external security breach.” It is worth noting that crypto on-chain sleuth ZachXBT pointed out in March that the exchange had covered up a hack in February 2022.

In India, crypto exchanges and the market at large remain unregulated while the government dithers and keeps delaying regulations.

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