AscendEX Withdrawal Crisis Deepens: ZachXBT Sets Minimum Threshold for Crypto Theft Cases

The AscendEX situation is getting worse, and ZachXBT is making sure the public knows exactly how bad it is.

The on-chain investigator has now confirmed that the exchange’s hot wallet is effectively empty, ETH, USDT, and SOL nearly completely depleted, while deposits continue to flow in and the official team has gone more than nine days without making a single public statement. Internal leaks have added an uglier layer to the story: four months of unpaid employee salaries, a co-founder allegedly running a “family business” dynamic to keep staff compliant, and fabricated relationships used to maintain control as the whole operation appears to have unraveled from the inside.

ZachXBT has also gone a step further, publicly revealing co-founder George (Jing) Cao’s Venmo account and telling affected users to chase their funds themselves, a move that reflects his visible frustration with an exchange founder who has repeatedly ignored direct outreach from people who cannot access their money.

Hot Wallets Are Empty, Deposits Still Open

ZachXBT’s on-chain analysis leaves little room for interpretation: AscendEX’s hot wallet holdings of ETH, USDT, and SOL are nearly depleted, making it structurally impossible for the exchange to process withdrawals at any meaningful scale. This is not a temporary technical delay or a routine processing lag. An exchange cannot pay out what it no longer holds, and the on-chain data confirms those holdings are effectively gone.

What makes the situation considerably more troubling is that the deposit function is still open. Users sending funds into AscendEX right now are adding to a pool that, based on current wallet data, the exchange has no demonstrated capacity to return. That combination, empty outgoing reserves, active incoming deposits, is one of the most clearly recognizable patterns in exchange failure history, and it is exactly what ZachXBT is describing in real time at AscendEX.

Founder Goes Silent as ZachXBT Reveals His Venmo

The response from AscendEX’s leadership has been complete silence. ZachXBT confirmed that co-founder George (Jing) Cao has not responded to major victims who have reached out repeatedly with documented concerns about their frozen funds. The official team has issued no public statement in over nine days since ZachXBT’s original post, despite the investigator’s findings gaining wide circulation across the crypto community.

Frustrated by the non-response, ZachXBT publicly disclosed Cao’s Venmo account and told affected users to contact him directly and chase their money themselves. The move is unusual even by the standards of ZachXBT’s typically direct approach, and it signals that he views the co-founder’s silence not as unavailability but as a choice, one he is deliberately working to make harder to sustain. Whether users attempting to contact Cao through Venmo will receive any response remains to be seen, but the disclosure ensures Cao cannot credibly claim he is simply unaware of the scale of the problem.

ZachXBT’s Case Threshold and What It Means for Victims

Separately from the AscendEX investigation, ZachXBT used the same period to clarify publicly what it takes for him to take on a new case. In a direct reply to a user requesting help, he stated that he handles cases only when four specific conditions are met: a single victim has lost more than $250,000 in a single theft, the jurisdiction is one that supports his investigative work, the incident occurs on a blockchain that supports his methodology, and the case does not involve memecoins or prediction markets.

If a case doesn’t meet all four conditions, ZachXBT stated he will not view private messages or respond. The clarification is practical rather than harsh, ZachXBT operates as an independent investigator handling complex, high-stakes cases where his specific tools and methods can actually make a difference. Setting a clear threshold prevents him from being overwhelmed with cases he cannot meaningfully pursue while ensuring his attention goes to situations where intervention has a realistic chance of recovering funds or achieving accountability.

For the majority of AscendEX users with smaller amounts frozen, the threshold also makes clear that ZachXBT’s personal involvement is limited to larger cases. His public documentation of the situation, the empty hot wallets, the founder’s silence, the leaked internal information, and the Venmo disclosure, is the form his assistance takes for the broader affected user base.

AscendEX’s Background and What Comes Next

Founded in 2018 by George (Jing) Cao and others under the original name Bitmax, AscendEX has a documented history that provides relevant context. In 2021, the exchange was hit by the Lazarus Group, the North Korean state-sponsored hacking operation responsible for some of the largest crypto thefts on record, losing approximately $78 million in that single incident. Whether the current collapse is the long-delayed financial consequence of that hack, the result of subsequent mismanagement, or something else entirely remains unclear, but the exchange’s track record makes its current silence all the more difficult to explain away as routine.

ZachXBT’s consistent advice to anyone with funds currently frozen at AscendEX remains unchanged: file a formal report with law enforcement and regulatory bodies in your country. Document every withdrawal attempt and every unanswered communication. The formal record matters, both for any potential individual recovery effort and for the broader regulatory response that may follow if this continues to deteriorate. At this point, waiting on the exchange to resolve the situation on its own terms does not appear to be a viable strategy.

Disclosure: This is not trading or investment advice. Always do your research before buying any cryptocurrency or investing in any services. Follow us on X @nulltxnews