BitMart Shutdown: Founder Denies Exit Scam as Wallets Drain

• Sheldon Xia denies any exit scam and says BitMart is still consolidating assets for an orderly wind-down.
• Wallets tracked by Arkham fell from about $102 million to about $69 million between July 6 and July 27.
• BMX lost roughly 81.5% in a week while users kept reporting frozen withdrawals.
• All BitMart trading ends August 26, with the platform closing on January 31, 2027.

BitMart founder Sheldon Xia broke weeks of near-silence on August 8 with a four-point message telling users the exchange has not run away and will not run away, issued while many account holders still cannot pull their money off the platform. The denial arrived two weeks into a shutdown that BitMart calls an orderly wind-down and that a growing share of its users read as a slow-motion collapse. Xia rejected leaked staff screenshots, denied that anyone moved funds early, and raised the idea of involving courts and outside auditors. He attached no balance figures, no proof-of-reserves, and no date for any of it.

Xia answers the exit-scam charge and skips the proof

His four points insist the team has not disappeared, ask users to ignore unverified disclosures from former or current employees, describe an ongoing inventory and consolidation of assets, and deny that BitMart pulled funds ahead of its obligations. What the message never contains is a single number. There is no snapshot of holdings, no named audit firm, and no timeline for the transparent report Xia dangled. He wrote it in Chinese and posted it on the same day BitMart had set for its U.S. customers to move their crypto out. A reassurance with no ledger attached does little for anyone whose withdrawal has been stuck for two weeks.

The wallets shed a third of their balance as withdrawals stalled

This is where the denial gets awkward. Wallets that Arkham attributes to BitMart held about $102 million on July 6 and about $69 million by July 27, roughly $33 million gone in three weeks. Much of what remains is hard to pay out in a hurry: around $41.5 million sat in WeFi’s WFI token, while the tracked USDT balance was near $91,000. On July 27, Lookonchain counted just 58 wallets withdrawing about $805,000 over a full day, with nothing processed in the latest eight-hour window it tracked. BMX had already cratered when the news broke, a slide this outlet covered as the token collapsed in a single day, dropping from near $0.31 on July 24 to about $0.057 three days later.

Why a freeze and a real review queue look identical from outside

A centralized exchange pays withdrawals from a shared pool, and any platform closing has reason to slow outflows so early claimants do not empty the hot wallets before later ones get paid. BitMart’s notice blames extra compliance and security reviews for the delays, which is a believable cause and also precisely what a stalling operator would claim. On the user’s screen a genuine queue and a deliberate freeze produce the same result. The WFI concentration makes it worse, since a reserve parked in a thinly traded token cannot be converted into the stablecoins users want back without moving the price against BitMart itself.

The global CEO was fired two days before anyone else knew

Nenter “Nathan” Chow, appointed BitMart’s global CEO in April 2025 when Xia moved to group president, said he was told on July 24 that his employment was ending and learned of the wind-down only when it went public. Less than two weeks earlier, the exchange’s H1 report had claimed its asset-management arm grew about 256% period over period. A platform publicly planning to expand, then closed over the head of the executive running it, invites far more speculation than any single screenshot. BitMart was also the second venue to schedule its own closure that week, three days after the 11-year-old derivatives exchange BitMEX announced its shutdown.

What the August 26 cutoff means if your funds are still on BitMart

For anyone still holding a balance, the calendar now matters more than the messaging. BitMart recommends filing withdrawal requests before the August 26 trading halt and warns that later requests move to a separate track with no committed timeline. Login access survives the January 2027 shutdown for record review, which offers a paper trail without a guarantee of payout. The next real test is whether the promised audit arrives with a named firm attached rather than staying a rhetorical offer. A rescue buyer looks unlikely too: Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao noted that acquiring a centralized exchange can saddle the buyer with inherited security flaws and backdoors, which is one reason no larger platform has moved to absorb BitMart’s users. Until a verifiable balance sheet appears, the withdrawal queue says more about BitMart’s position than the founder’s post does.