MapleChange, a small Canadian cryptocurrency trading platform, drew ire from investors over the weekend for its sudden departure.

Users were widely unimpressed by the news, and reacted with a range of emotion from amusement to rage and criticism of MapleChange’s methods.

Following the tweet, the website for the exchange, maplechange.com, no longer worked and MapleChange closed all social media accounts (its Twitter account came back online a short while later, although they reiterated they could not return any funds).

The company eventually posted a Discord server to discuss refunds, but many users on Twitter reported the invitation not working shortly after the tweet went out.

MapleChange’s messaging changed somewhat throughout the incident, at first tweeting that they had “no more funds” to pay anyone back, then saying investors could private message the account with their email, the amount they were missing and where to withdraw it.

In a series of tweets sent Monday morning, MapleChange stood by its claim that it was hacked, despite widespread accusations that their actions were part of an exit scam.

Multiple tweets about recovered wallets began going out early Monday afternoon, but some users were still unable to see their wallets due to maplechange.com still being down. Or criticized the move of getting developers to recover wallets in this way.

Nigel Green, founder and chief executive of independent financial advisors organization deVere Group, says that investing in cryptocurrency is never a sure thing, and crypto investors should never feel like they’re 100 per cent protected against security issues.

“You must never anticipate an exchange to be safe and secure,” says Green. “Doing your homework will pay dividends.”

With more than 200 exchanges in operation, that can be a daunting task.

Green says what you should look for in an exchange is one that is easy to use, and one that shows signs of good liquidity. For a lot of investors, that will mean going for a more established exchange.

“The larger exchanges backed by robust companies would be ideal, because they obtain adequate orders to quickly match buyers and seller orders, as well as having the economic position of scale to keep charges down,” says Green.

“Investors ought to assess exchanges as well as the businesses behind them as they would do with any other organization that they would depend on to grow and protect their money, such as financial institutions.”

Yahoo Canada Finance readers, do you have tips to share on choosing a cryptocurrency exchange? Share them with us in the comments.

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