Crypto exchange rejects Brazil court deadline to resolve withdrawals

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Atlas Quantum, a Brazilian cryptocurrency exchange that has been the subject of much controversy, has defied a court deadline to resolve withdrawal issues. In a blog post, the company stated that it was working to solve withdrawal hitches, but that it didn’t have a deadline to do so. This comes after a Brazilian court froze the exchange’s accounts and gave it 48 hours to resolve the outstanding accounts.

A federal court in Brazil ruled that Atlas Quantum’s activities constituted practices associated with financial pyramid schemes on September 16. This was after one of the users took to court accusing the exchange of denying him access to his crypto stash. The user claimed the exchange barred him from withdrawing his 6 BTC, with Atlas blaming the mishap on Know-Your-Customer issues with its accounts on other exchanges.

In a separate ruling, a Sao Paulo court ruled that Atlas had 48 hours to settle all the outstanding withdrawal requests from its clients or risk severe penalties.

The company promptly responded to the charges stating, “Atlas Quantum reports that when notified, it will manifest itself in the case file. On the issue of withdrawals, the company adds that it is working to resolve it as soon as possible.”

Three days after the ruling, the exchange is yet to settle withdrawal requests, but claims to be working on the issue. In its Q&A-structured statement, the exchange revealed, “We are in the process of implementing the solutions required by the exchanges, and we do not have a deadline to reestablish withdrawal processing. We emphasize that our team is 100% focused so that normality is restored as soon as possible.”

The exchange also responded to other major concerns, including claims that it was a pyramid scheme. To this, the company stated:

We don’t have any referral programs, referrals or anything featuring multi-level marketing, very common in financial fraud schemes. In this sense, we never guarantee fixed returns, since our main product is automated high frequency arbitrage. We have always made it clear that by the nature of our product and the market, income is variable and we may even have days with negative profitability, although we work hard not to.

The statement also included a video that supposedly proved the exchange was in possession of the assets it reported to have. In the video, Atlas showed the purported balances in its Poloniex, Gate.io and HitBTC accounts. Combined, the exchange alleges to have 15,000 BTC and over $45 million in Tether. However, some market experts have disputed the report, claiming the exchange is overstating its position.