We often remember Mt. Gox or the most recent fiasco when it comes to exchanges going down, but there are a lot more cases and these melt downs are common than I had thought. I got some data from Cryptowisse and their Exchange Graveyard and did a rookie analysis on it for you fine folk. The highlights are below!

161 exchanges (~42%) just vanished

This means that no reason whatsoever was given to customers or society as a whole. These "just vanished". The categories and their percentages are:

• Business reasons: 87
• Hacked: 15
• Just disappeared: 161
• Rebranding: 47
• Regulatory Reasons: 29
• Scam: 29

It helps to have a chart to visualize it:

BR - Business Reasons, H - Hack, JD - Just Disappeared, R - Rebranding, RR - Regulatory Reasons, S - Scam

Note on Rebranding cases: follow up was not provided for the new brands.

215 melt downs (~58%) happened in the 2020-2023 period

• 75 in 2020
• 51 in 2021
• 79 in 2022
• 10 in 2023 (and it's not even mid February yet)

In 2020, 31 shut down voluntarily while 34 disappeared with no explanation. Dutch exchange NLexch and Chilean Chilebit were shut down by their respective governments. This is just a glimpse on how no one can trust any exchange with their money. In 2022 we know which one was the star of this row.

The day with most closures was 11th Jan 2021, with 16 exchanges going down

On this day, 11 exchanges just disappeared, 3 closed down due to business reason, 1 was a scam and 1 was a rebranding.

Disappeared: BEPSwap DEX, BitRabbit CEX, LOEx CEX, Daubit CEX, BiONE CEX, Looprind DEX, MixCoins CEX, Saturn Network DEX, Bitinfi CEX, 1nvity.io DEX, Linkswap DEX

Scam: World Markets FX Crypto Brokers

Business reasons: Poloni DEX, Braziliex CEX

Rebranding: RADAR DELAY DEX

TL;DR and advice

Most exchanges that closed down "just disappeared".

We're entering a bull run phase after next halving, scheduled for Q2 2024. Many new exchanges will appear, as well as hedge funds of the sorts of 3AC and "promising" projects of the likes of Celsius. This latter I remember that was advertised north and south at this sub, as well as by "influencers". We know how it went.

Use exchanges as exchanges and take control of your keys by having a cold storage. Heck, if you don't have the money just use a hot wallet of your choice. Make sure we avoid repeating 2022.