Paxful CEO Says Users Can Withdraw Funds—But They Say Otherwise

Ray Youssef—ex-CEO of the now-shuttered peer-to-peer Bitcoin market Paxful—triumphantly introduced yesterday that withdrawals are actually unfrozen for the overwhelming majority of customers. 

“Sleepless night time with no engineers or compliance of us however we did it,” Youssef wrote. “That is my remaining act as CEO of Paxful.”

In accordance with a tweet from the previous govt, 88% of frozen Paxful consumer accounts are actually eligible for withdrawals. Or are they?Regardless of Youssef explicitly inviting his followers to submit a reply to verify that they’d been capable of declare their funds, Twitter is absent of any such success tales. A lot louder, nonetheless, is a refrain of unhappy customers who say they nonetheless can’t get their a refund. 

In response to a consumer’s report that his funds remained locked up, Youssef wrote, “Don’t hassle posting. Whether it is frozen it’s for a motive. Its calle[d] compliance and no CEO can ever undo that.”

“In case your account remains to be frozen then I’m sorry however I’ve no energy to unfreeze these funds and they’re within the palms of the U.S. regulators,” wrote Youssef added later within the Twitter thread, the place he additionally urged followers self-custody their cash sooner or later. 

Paxful was pressured to indefinitely droop operations earlier this month amid a mix of govt departures, regulatory battles, and an inside dispute with a Paxful co-founder who sued Youssef after being kicked out of the corporate final yr. On the time, a Paxful spokesperson advised Decrypt that “customers can get their funds out safely,” although could have been nonetheless reporting withdrawal points as early as April 5. 

Confronted with a mob of indignant clients accusing him of being a “scammer,” Youssef launched a video assertion on Sunday stressing that he was not “working off with anybody’s cash.” He additionally clarified that roughly $120 million in complete funds have been on Paxful to start with, of which $4.4 million stays frozen. 

Although Paxful’s buying and selling quantity paled compared to mainstream centralized exchanges, it had noteworthy markets in areas like Argentina the place hyperinflation had gripped the nation’s nationwide forex. 

“Anybody that’s saying that in some way Ray would run off and destroy his fame by stealing $4 million… that’s disgusting,” he stated. 

Paxful launched an official assertion on Monday establishing that Youssef had formally resigned as the corporate’s CEO. Nonetheless extra Twitter customers responded to the information with extra claims that they couldn’t withdraw their Bitcoin. 

“[People] by no means submit thanks while you do issues like this. A thankless job,” he tweeted. “My phrase is all the time good and I’ve taken 8 [years] of [people] calling me a scammer for what the U.S. authorities does.”

Youssef didn’t reply to Decrypt’s request for remark.