BitMart is walking back its own shutdown plan. Five days before an August 26 deadline that was set to halt all trading on the exchange, the platform said it is now exploring a restructuring path that could combine a phased resumption of operations with distributions to creditors — a reversal from the full wind-down it announced on July 26.
The exchange has brought on White & Case, one of the largest insolvency practices in the world, as restructuring counsel. In an update posted to its official account, BitMart said the firm will work alongside its other advisers to evaluate options, including any framework for restarting parts of the business, and that a detailed roadmap covering reserve balances and a repayment schedule is expected no later than September 9.
From Full Shutdown to Phased Restart
BitMart's original July 26 announcement was unambiguous: new registrations, deposits, and new trading orders were halted immediately, all trading was set to end August 26, and the platform was scheduled to close entirely by January 31, 2027. The about-face suggests internal reviews found that continuing partial operations could preserve more value for creditors than liquidating outright — a calculation insolvency counsel is often brought in specifically to assess.
BitMart has been here before. In December 2021, the exchange disclosed a hack that drained roughly $196 million from its hot wallets — more than $110 million in Ethereum-based assets and $115 million on Binance Smart Chain — after attackers obtained a stolen private key. BitMart pledged at the time to use its own funds to reimburse affected users, but reports in the following weeks indicated that compensation was slow to reach victims, a history that adds weight to how BitMart's current creditors are likely reading this restructuring news.
Related: Appeals Court Revives Binance Theft Lawsuit, Voids Forced Arbitration
What Happens Next
For now, BitMart's potential resumption of operations remains explicitly unconfirmed — the exchange has stressed that any restart is still subject to legal, financial, operational and regulatory review, not a done deal. The September 9 roadmap is the date to watch: that's when BitMart has said it will lay out both its reserve position and the schedule for repaying what it owes.
Exchange collapses that pivot from full shutdown to negotiated restructuring aren't unheard of in crypto, but the outcomes for creditors vary widely depending on how much of the balance sheet survived the initial crisis. Until BitMart publishes specifics, users owed funds are left weighing a cautiously reversed shutdown against the exchange's own history of slow follow-through on past compensation promises.
