AscendEX Let Me Deposit Easily, But Withdrawing Became a Nightmare

Update to my original post

A few weeks ago I made a post because my ETH withdrawal got stuck in “Initiating” without a TXID and remained there for weeks. At first I believed it was just a temporary technical issue and that support would eventually solve it, but after weeks of getting nowhere I decided to investigate the exchange myself.

For weeks I was trying to understand why my withdrawal wasn’t moving. Support kept asking for patience, tickets received generic responses and Telegram admins eventually stopped replying altogether. The only way to get their attention again was to create a new Telegram account and ask questions publicly inside the official group. Every time I did that, admins suddenly became active again while private messages continued to be ignored.

A few days ago I reached the point where I simply couldn’t accept that my funds might be gone, so I started spending time on blockchain explorers trying to understand what was actually happening. During the last two days I began analyzing AscendEX hot wallets across multiple chains:

• Arbitrum
• Ethereum
• BSC
• Polygon
• Solana
• Arkham

Multichain hot wallet: 0x983873529f95132BD1812A3B52c98Fb271d2f679

What I found was very concerning. The exchange appears to hold millions of dollars in assets, but most of the value comes from newly listed low-liquidity project tokens such as REUR, ASD, FTRB and other small-cap tokens. AscendEX constantly lists new projects and users deposit USDT, ETH and other liquid assets to buy them, but when users want to withdraw their funds, certain assets and networks appear to become extremely difficult to withdraw.

While my ETH withdrawal remained stuck, some of their wallets contained almost no native ETH. At the same time trading activity continued normally and markets remained active. Personally, after monitoring the exchange activity and wallet movements during the last several days, I became convinced that a significant part of the exchange volume is likely generated by market-making bots. Markets remain active, orders continue moving and volume looks healthy even while users struggle to withdraw certain assets.

During my research I also discovered another Telegram group (t .me / ascendexx)

Inside that group I recognized several usernames that I had previously seen asking questions inside the official AscendEX Telegram group before being banned. I was eventually banned myself after repeatedly asking questions regarding my withdrawal. Speaking with these users confirmed many of my suspicions and showed me that my case was not an isolated incident.

The most important thing I learned is that support was completely useless. The only progress I made came from monitoring the wallets myself. I started checking which assets were actually available on specific chains and whether enough liquidity existed before attempting withdrawals. After identifying a token that was present in one of their wallets, I performed a small test withdrawal and it succeeded.

At this point I have managed to recover a small portion of my funds and I continue withdrawing through assets that still appear to have available liquidity and that can easily be exchanged elsewhere after withdrawal. The fact that users have to monitor exchange wallets in real time in order to determine which assets can actually be withdrawn should concern everyone using this exchange.

Everything I learned came from blockchain analysis, wallet monitoring and communication with other affected users. Support never explained which assets were working, which networks had problems or how users could recover their funds.

At this point I strongly do not recommend depositing funds to AscendEX under any circumstances. In my experience, getting money into the exchange is very easy, but getting it back out can become extremely difficult.

If you currently have funds on AscendEX, I would strongly recommend testing small withdrawals immediately and verifying that the assets you hold can actually be withdrawn before depositing anything else.