Customers furious as Cryptopia halts trading

A surge in demand has caused cryptocurrency trader Cryptopia to halt some of its trading. Picture / 123RF

Cryptocurrency trading firm Cryptopia has faced a barrage of complaints after suspending some of its trading activity due to overload.

On Sunday the Christchurch-based firm suspended trading in two of its base markets, the Doge and Litecoin currencies, saying it could not handle the number of trades occurring.

Co-founder Rob Dawson blamed the high number of registrations and scaling issues for the trading halt.

"By the 1st of December we hit 500,000 users. On the 31st of December we hit 1,000,000 users. By the 3rd of January we hit 1,100,000 users. By the 4th of January, even with registrations disabled for three hours, we hit 1,200,000 users," Dawson said.

"With registrations paused again we're now sitting at 1,400,000 users. We've gone from just 2 people to over 50 people including contractors and consultants and we're looking to at the very least double that as soon as we can, but that also brings with it its own set of hurdles."

A year ago the firm had just 30,000 users. Dawson said the company was aware its level of service had been suffering and asked users to be patient.

Several customers took to Twitter and the site's forum to complain about the issues and the lack of information and support available.

"As these guys are extremely hard to reach for outsiders the only point of contact for their clients is to create a support ticket," said one customer, Filip Eskilsson. "But since they just ignore those, all people with problems are now currently in the dark."

Some of us are getting CRUSHED because people are liquidating their positions on other foreign sites that we don’t have access too, and we are stuck holding the bag. Pretty unfair. I’m out a fortune since last night since you haven’t resumed trading. Need action an action plan

— Jordan Berkowitz (@BerkowitzJordan) January 7, 2018

Cryptopia said the decision to halt trading on Doge and Litecoin was aimed at disrupting as few users as possible with the Litecoin accounting for just 10 per cent of its trades.

It was working on bringing the markets back as soon as possible it said, adding that no users had lost money.

Cryptopia is registered on the Financial Services Providers register in New Zealand. Currency trading, including cryptocurrencies, is an unlicensed activity but providers still have "fair dealing" obligations.