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ZachXBT flags AscendEX: stalled withdrawals, hot wallets thin on ETH, USDT, SOL

On June 26 the on-chain investigator said the BitMax-era exchange's known hot wallets on Arkham and TRM lack large-cap reserves. AscendEX has not responded.

by 7 min read
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On-chain investigator ZachXBT said on June 26, 2026 that AscendEX — the centralized exchange that operated as BitMax until March 2021 — is "likely facing liquidity issues," citing his own walk through the platform's known hot wallets on Arkham and TRM Labs. The post pointed to "reserves [that] appear to lack large cap tokens such as ETH, USDT, USDC, SOL," anchored against weeks of user reports of withdrawals stuck in an initiating state, requests silently rejected, and support tickets going dark after one acknowledgement. As of June 27, AscendEX has not published an official response to ZachXBT's claim or to the withdrawal complaints.

What happened

ZachXBT's post (June 26, X) summarized the situation in one paragraph: he reviewed AscendEX's labelled hot wallets on Arkham and TRM Labs, found the visible reserves did not include large-cap stablecoins or majors (ETH, USDT, USDC, SOL), and concluded the exchange is "likely facing liquidity issues." He stopped short of an insolvency call, and explicitly noted what every exchange operator will note in response: hot-wallet balances alone do not prove insolvency, because customer assets are typically held in unlabelled cold storage.

The on-chain claim landed on top of weeks of user complaints already public on Trustpilot, Reddit and the AscendEX subreddit:

  • Withdrawals frozen in the initiating state with no transaction hash ever produced.
  • Requests marked rejected without an explanation message.
  • KYC-completed accounts unable to release funds for more than a month.
  • Support tickets acknowledged once, then silence.

ZachXBT also noted, as standing context, that in May 2026 AscendEX halted spot trading on two stablecoins after what the exchange called "irregular token minting activity" — a separate prior incident, not the cause of the current withdrawal queue, but a data point on operational health.

Why hot-wallet thinness is a signal — and where it isn't proof

A CEX's hot wallets cover routine withdrawal flow; the rest sits in cold storage. So a thin hot wallet is not, on its own, evidence of missing customer funds. What makes the AscendEX read a signal rather than noise is the combination:

  1. Reported withdrawal failures over weeks, not hours — consistent with a hot wallet that is not being refilled from cold.
  2. No public on-chain cold-to-hot rebalance transactions visible on the labelled clusters that would explain the gap.
  3. No exchange statement addressing the queue or publishing a proof-of-reserves snapshot since the complaints began.

A solvent exchange running into operational congestion fixes #1 in days, fixes #3 in hours. Both being stuck reads less like a back-office issue and more like the early hours of the well-known FTX / Bittrex Global / AAX / Hotbit pattern.

This is not a confirmed insolvency. It is a flagged-by-an-investigator-with-on-chain-evidence event that the exchange is, as of the morning of June 28, treating with silence.

On-chain context

ZachXBT did not publish a specific drained tx or a single attacker address — there is no exploit here, only a balance observation across wallets that Arkham and TRM tag as AscendEX-controlled. The labels themselves are the analytics providers' call; we mention that explicitly because the inference chain runs through them:

  • Arkham wallet label: AscendEX-tagged hot wallets (Arkham Intelligence dataset).
  • TRM Labs wallet attribution: AscendEX-clustered addresses (TRM dataset).
  • Cross-check a curious reader can run: open Arkham, search "AscendEX," sum the ETH, USDT, USDC and SOL balances on the labelled hot wallets, compare against AscendEX's claimed 24h withdrawal-supporting reserves. ZachXBT's call is reproducible in minutes.

Without an official cold-storage attestation from AscendEX, the only ground truth available is what the labelled hot wallets show — and ZachXBT says what they show is thin.

Numbers — what we know vs what we don't

- ZachXBT post                : June 26, 2026 on X
- AscendEX founded            : August 2018 (as BitMax)
- Renamed to AscendEX         : March 2021
- HQ                          : Singapore; founder George Cao (ex-Wall Street)
- Hot-wallet asset gap        : ETH, USDT, USDC, SOL (per ZachXBT on Arkham + TRM)
- User complaints duration    : days to over a month (Trustpilot / Reddit)
- Withdrawal status reports   : "initiating" stuck / "rejected" no reason
- AscendEX official statement : none as of June 27, 2026
- Prior incident May 2026     : 2 stablecoins halted, "irregular minting"
- Prior incident Dec 2021     : hot wallet drained for ~$77M, refunded

USD figures from prior incidents are at-event values; we do not estimate current customer assets at risk because the exchange has not published a proof-of-reserves and we are not going to invent one.

Impact

  • AscendEX users with funds on the exchange. The conservative read on a flag like this is to attempt a withdrawal of any sensitive size now, and to keep the support-ticket reference. If the withdrawal completes, the exposure is closed. If it stays in initiating, that confirms the operational issue for that account and is documentation for any later recovery process.
  • Counterparties holding AscendEX paper. Any market maker, prop desk, or settlement counterparty with credit lines or open positions against AscendEX should treat the venue as elevated risk until the exchange publishes either a withdrawal-queue clearing or a proof-of-reserves.
  • Listed assets concentrated on AscendEX. Smaller-cap tokens with a meaningful share of book depth on AscendEX face the usual delisting-or-vanishing-liquidity scenario if the exchange winds down. Project teams with treasury exposure or LM emissions running through the venue have a fortnight, not a quarter, to plan around it.
  • Regulators. AscendEX is Singapore-domiciled but services a global user base. MAS is the relevant primary authority; expect the standard advisory mechanism — investor alert list addition, like Hyperliquid got on June 26 — if the silence persists.

What to watch

  1. An AscendEX public response. Either a proof-of-reserves attestation (the only thing that closes the question) or a withdrawal-queue clearing announcement with on-chain tx receipts. Anything else is noise.
  2. The labelled wallets, on Arkham. If cold-to-hot rebalance transactions start landing, the hot-wallet thinness was a flow issue. If they don't, the read holds.
  3. MAS action. Singapore's investor alert list added Hyperliquid on June 26 — the same day as ZachXBT's AscendEX post. MAS does not need a court finding to add an exchange to the alert list; persistent silence in the face of public withdrawal complaints is the standard trigger.
  4. Listings reaction. If major book-makers (Wintermute, Amber, GSR) cut AscendEX from their venue rotation, that's a counterparty signal the exchange is being internally re-priced. It usually leaks within 48 hours.

Context — the post-FTX pattern small CEXs keep running

This is the same opening act we have watched several times since November 2022:

  • 2022 — FTX. Hot-wallet thinness flagged publicly; "we are fine" denial; withdrawal queue; bankruptcy.
  • 2022 — AAX. Withdrawal "maintenance" claim; silence; bankruptcy.
  • 2023 — Hotbit. Withdrawal pause; orderly wind-down statement; closure.
  • 2023 — Bittrex Global. Withdrawals throttled; service halt; SEC settlement.

Not every flagged exchange goes the same way. Some are restored after a back-office bottleneck clears. But the response timing is the cleanest signal: solvent exchanges publish proof-of-reserves and clear queues in hours, not weeks. AscendEX is now at the multi-week mark on public complaints and a full business day past a named on-chain investigator's flag, without a statement. That is the data point.

ZachXBT's track record on this exact call type is the reason it moves the needle: the prior calls on Bittrex Global, Hotbit and the early Hyperliquid liquidity questions all preceded the events that retroactively justified them. None of which means AscendEX is insolvent today. It means the silence is no longer the cheap option.

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