Bitfinex To Socialize Losses: Customers Will Lose 36% of Deposited Funds

After missing the announcement deadline, Bitfinex has finally decided to share with its customer the plans for re-enabling withdrawals: Customers funds will receive a 36.067% ‘haircut’ on all assets. At the core of the statement, Bitfinex said:

After much thought, analysis, and consultation, we have arrived at the conclusion that losses must be generalized across all accounts and assets. This is the closest approximation to what would happen in a liquidation context. Upon logging into the platform, customers will see that they have experienced a generalized loss percentage of 36.067%.

The company said that they will explain in full detail the methodology used to compute these losses in a later announcement, but it effectively means that users who deposited or withheld Litecoins, Ethers (including the classic flavour), and US dollars will be affected (even users who didn’t lend their fiat money will be subject to the ‘haircut’).

Bitfinex continues to discuss strategic options with numerous potential investors to seek ways to fully compensate clients, such discussions can and will take some time to develop. The hong kong-based company will also issue a ‘BFXCoin’ token representing each customer’s discrete losses.

BFX tokens will remain outstanding until redeemed in full by Bitfinex or possibly exchanged—upon the creditor’s request and Bitfinex’s acceptance—for shares of iFinex Inc. We are still sorting out many details on this; we will post further updates in the coming days.

Zane Tackett, Bitfinex’s community spokesperson, said that the company has plans to release in the next 24-48 hours a ‘read-only’ version of the website, enabling customers to see their exact balance, as the company began to settle all open margin positions after the hack. The 36.067% generalized loss percentage will be factored in, the next phase is to enable customer withdrawals, for which there is not immediate timeline.

The digital assets platform suffered a security breach on august 2, the hacker stole 120,000 BTC (representing more than $60 million)

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