Developers at Peer-to-Peer (P2P) crypto exchange Bisq have temporarily disabled the platform’s services after they came across a critical security vulnerability. A total of seven traders lost a total of 3 Bitcoin (BTC) as well as 4,000 Monero (XMR) which the exchange said they fully expect to re-fund the trader's accounts.

Known in the past as Bitsquare, the decentralized exchange (DEX) Bisq facilitates crypto-to-fiat trades and doesn’t ask for formal intermediaries. In an announcement to its community from April 8, Bisq developers said they’re investigating what caused the security problem and posted:

“If you have any active trades right now, please DO NOT send any funds.”

Suspension Can Be Overridden by Users at Their Own Risk

The developers insisted that users should not send any funds to the exchange, in case they’re involved in some trades provided in a list of multisig transactions:

26cfc5b3d1f93aee1e97ad13a3c1e8d6ee75a8f510ece57425dbf3b0c18d2b8f c320a2741e99e8e5e8cd82201e812ed75ce6fef418d2a2a59f96510e38512660 65b0becd8068f41f12026b442556d2ae3430d0bfa409e97d2c31cba5ed892b41 c89ab82a01931378ecd5c78b4b9fce726c97233136ae0d4a266067259f214263 6bd8293c485e201448ee87b5fabff8b7148453877bdd02382bbbda12454b4c6c c0eb83ce6b05aa0c8c7682c87551a1c35444bf1f75052b22c5fbcaf0f8594875 5587817bb12ce082dcf8aeec66692bde410666b42ff124d0543acb887773fc56 a49e8910e3b22e37e3b38c88531ec0d5d2690ae611d68852816c5f3c34f2d9c5

Since Bisq is a decentralized exchange, its developers can’t intervene to halt operations completely, so it was mentioned the suspension can be overridden by users, but at their own risk.

What the developers did was to discourage users to override the suspension. After promising to provide further details, they said undergoing trades can’t be completed until the v1.3.0 of the Bisq application is released, mentioning that the platform’s security model doesn’t put the users’ funds at risk.

Bisq Last Year Was More Popular than LocalBitcoins

As previous reports are saying, Bisq last year was actually more popular than LocalBitcoins, the popular P2P platform. This happened because LocalBitcoins suddenly decided to withdraw its users’ option of executing and meeting trades for cash.

Earlier in February, it had its lowest point in 7 years as far as overall trading volumes go because it went through some serious allegations and incidents brought on by its users. Whereas in January, it hit its lowest weekly volumes in 2 years, in the Chinese market. While there’s no knowing when trading on Bisq is going to start again, the exchange is almost sure to remain more popular than LocalBitcoins for the time being.