Bitcoin's Price Is Nearing $10K On a Single, Troubled Exchange

Cryptocurrency exchange WEX continues to see prices well out of step with the broader market amid a near-total freeze on customer withdrawals.

As CoinDesk reported, customers of WEX - a kind of successor to the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange BTC-e - have been on tenterhooks since July 12, as they've largely been unable to get outbound payments processed.

The only exceptions have been for the crypto assets tether and zcash and the price disparities suggest that some WEX users are utilizing these tokens as a way out.

The normally dollar-tied tether, also known as USDT, is currently above $2 and WEX's price for zcash is $440, or more than double the prevailing rate on the broader market.

"If you buy zcash on WEX, you will have to sell it somewhere else much cheaper, losing up to 50 percent, as the USDT rate is now $2.195 on WEX," Grigory, a systems administrator from a town in Russia called Ivanovo, told CoinDesk.

Cryptocurrency prices have risen on the site as well, with the value of bitcoin exceeding $9,600 as of press time, or more than $1,400 above the price recorded on CoinDesk's Bitcoin Price Index.

One of the groups was promoted and possibly created by Dmitry Vassiliev, an official owner and CEO of WEX, who previously told CoinDesk that he lost control over the exchange due to the intervention of some people he declined to identify.

On Monday, a user in one of the channels claiming he is Dmitry Vassiliev - using two similar usernames, - wrote that he had agreed to register the exchange in the name of the new beneficiaries who are already de facto managing WEX. The user claimed that the deal is going to take place on Thursday, and promised to reveal the names of those beneficiaries if they don't fix the situation on that day.

According to Grigori, avenues for actually taking money off the exchange exist - but at a price.

"Now people who wanted to quit at any price have already quit, but the exchange rate is still bad.".