Bitget Goes Nuclear: Exchange Files Suit Over Alleged $20M VOXEL Futures Racket

Crypto exchange Bitget isn’t playing nice—legal teams are mobilizing after what appears to be a brazen $20 million market manipulation scheme targeting VOXEL futures. The platform claims bad actors exploited derivatives mechanisms to artificially distort prices.

Who needs regulators when you’ve got exchange lawyers? Bitget’s move signals a growing trend of crypto platforms taking enforcement into their own hands—just don’t call it vigilante justice. Expect discovery to reveal whether this was a rogue trader or an institutional ’oopsie.’

Meanwhile, VOXEL holders are left wondering if their tokens are collateral damage—another day in the wild west of leveraged crypto gambling.

Legal action and user protections

Jiayin Xie, Bitget’s Head of Asia, confirmed on the 27th of April that legal notices were issued to the suspected accounts.

Bitget announced that it will not penalize users who traded VOXEL during the 30-minute disruption on the 20th of April (16:00–16:30 UTC) and subsequently withdrew funds, despite some users initially being affected by frozen assets.

Source: X

The exchange has reinstated the affected accounts and assured users that it will not take further punitive action against them.

Bitget: What happened during the VOXEL spike

The manipulation occurred swiftly, with VOXEL surging over 200% within just 30 minutes, briefly becoming Bitget’s most traded asset. Its price ROSE from $0.125 to $0.1645, fueled by trades that bypassed the regular order book.

Bitget has attributed the spike to a suspected flaw in its market-making bot. This bot caused orders to execute unusually quickly, creating an opportunity for manipulation.

In response, trading was paused, several accounts were frozen, and Bitget announced plans to roll back affected trades.

This incident raises questions about transparency, highlights potential backlash, and underscores significant implications for the industry.

Transparency, backlash, and industry implications

Bitget maintains that the issue was neither the result of an internal failure nor an external hack. However, the exchange has not yet disclosed the identities of those involved, with a full incident report expected soon.

In the meantime, Bitget is facing growing backlash. Critics have highlighted previous remarks by CEO Gracy Chen, who had criticized Hyperliquid’s handling of a similar incident involving the JELLY token.

Now, with Bitget under scrutiny, the situation has reignited broader concerns about crypto exchange reliability and the risks of automated trading systems.