The largest cryptocurrency trading platform in Southeast Asia, the Philippines-based PDAX platform, has suffered a technical failure and accidentally sold users BTC at $6,000 down 88% from the crypto’s price of $48,000 at the time.
The incident occurred, according to Filipino news outlet BitPinas, after transaction volumes grew by 70x on the trading platform, leading to a technical glitch that allowed for orders to go through at such a deep discount.
The cryptocurrency trading platform’s CEO, Nichel Gaba, defended the platform saying a “very small number of orders” at such a discount needed up being valid. Some, however, went through, but the exchange’s transactions were not valid. Gaba said:
It’s very understandable that a lot of users will feel upset they were able to buy what they thought an order was there for Bitcoin at very low prices. But unfortunately, the underlying Bitcoins were never in the possession of the exchange, so there’s never really anything there to be bought or sold, unfortunately.
According to some customers, however, PDAX has been asking users to “return their Bitcoin.” Reports on Facebook suggest the company, after “almost 24 hours” asked customers to send the funds back to they “may be compelled to take legal action.”
Traders believe their purchases were well within their rights, and did not violate any laws or regulations. Yahoo Finance quotes an attorney representing the affected users, Rafael Padilla, saying the trades were “legitimate under applicable laws, decided cases, and of course according to PDAX’s very own terms and conditions/user agreement.”
Some users have now reportedly been locked out of their accounts because PDAX cannot reverse the transactions itself. A statement from the exchange claims 95% of affected accounts have been restored.
Featured image via Unsplash.
