Hotbit Halts Deposits and Withdrawals Following a Criminal Investigation

　　Hotbit suspended deposits, withdrawals and trading for all clients. While such actions are often taken when crypto exchanges face financial difficulties, some of Hotbit's assets were frozen due to an investigation into one of its former employees.

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　　A former management executive was involved in a project, which was against Hotbit's principles. The exchange was unaware of the project.

　　The project is suspected to have violated the law, which led to law enforcement freezing some of Hotbit's funds. Senior management executives have been subpoenaed since the end of July to assist with the investigation.

　　Hotbit stresses that it was not involved in the project and is cooperating with law enforcement agencies. Hotbit applied for the release of the frozen assets via its lawyers. The clients' funds are safe, service is expected to resume once the assets are released.

　　FTC Probes Bitmart

　　A Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation was launched into BitMart's security breach. Two hot wallets of the exchange were compromised in December 2021 (ETH and BSC wallets). $150 million were stolen.

　　The private key was used to withdraw the cryptocurrencies.

　　BitMart's operators are being investigated to determine whether clients were misled about the security offered by the exchange and to ensure no financial-services laws were violated.

　　In the case of Solana, Slope wallets were compromised, which allowed the bad actor to drain thousands of wallets. The FTC wishes to ensure the operations took adequate measures as the breach was via the private key.

　　Since the hack of the Slope wallets, investors are strongly advised to consider hardware wallets as opposed to hot wallets. Ledger and Trezor are among the most popular hardware wallets in today's market.