BitFinex has long been seen as an exclusive club with its minimum balance requirements, but in a bid to draw in more traders – and legitimately increase its daily trade volumes – it has decided to lift its minimum equity requirements. During 2017 BitFinex was at the heart of a wash trading scandal that showed many exchanges were faking daily trade volumes. Many people in the crypto community have slammed BitFinex in the past for its minimum balance requirements, stating that crypto should be available for all – not just the wealthy.
Other Upgrades Coming Too!
In the latest BitFinex upgrade, more features are coming – not just the scrapping of minimum balance requirements. The popular crypto exchange has now added in an upgraded support center that allows for queries to be resolved faster and in a more user-friendly manner. On top of this, BitFinex has launched a new KYC portal that uses state-of-the-art features in a bid to make the process more streamlined. Finally, the exchange is now adding educational materials on every token that is listed on the trading platform.
Recovering Nicely
Back in 2016, BitFinex was the victim of a hack that saw 119,756 Bitcoin stolen from the exchange. The funds were considered lost forever and the exchange certainly lost a lot of faith fro crypto traders. However, in February the US government managed to claw back 27.66 BTC from the attack – returning it to BitFinex. While there is still an awful lot of Bitcoin still unaccounted for, the process of repatriating the funds back to the exchange is underway.
Still Manipulating Bitcoin?
At the height of the 2017 crypto madness, BitFinex was accused of using Tether to manipulate the price of Bitcoin. Tether had some rather unusual links to BitFinex, and this led many to believe Tether was BitFinex’s private manipulation tool. Every time more Tether was printed, Bitcoin significantly rose in value. Most of the Tether was sent to Bitfinex where it was quickly traded into Bitcoin – a key part of the entire scandal. While Tether appears to have been rather quiet in the latest market uptick, Chinese investors are starting to flock to big name stablecoins. Whether BitFinex’s manipulation days are long gone is still yet to be seen, but we hope it learnt its lesson.
BitFinex is certainly working hard to clean up its image and be seen as the people’s hero of the crypto trading world, but it still has a long way to go. Removing minimum balance requirements will certainly help, but this could simply be a ploy to cover up its wash trading habits.
