Echo Base forms BitMart claimholder group after unanswered $10M rescue offer

Echo Base, the special-situations firm that sent a $10 million pre-negotiated bankruptcy offer to the Bitmart exchange’s management, has followed up on its August moves with a call to customers who can’t access their crypto on the exchange to join its ad hoc committee.

The group that Echo Base is assembling is being pitched as a way for affected BitMart users to form a coordinated legal front after the exchange continues to fail to honor customer withdrawal attempts and ignore the formal rescue offer.

Echo Base presents itself as a privately funded platform that buys into and stabilizes distressed digital-asset companies. BitMart landed on the firm’s radar after it announced in July that it would shut down its crypto exchange on January 31, 2027, per Cryptopolitan’s earlier reporting.

What is Echo Base offering Bitmart customers?

First of all, the committee of affected Bitmart users that Echo Base is assembling will be represented by Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor and Ashbury Legal, two retained law firms that will also weigh recovery options.

The committee claims that it now represents a “significant and growing” pool of users impacted by the Bitmart closure news. However, the press release did not put a dollar figure on how large the pool is.

Echo Base is moving forward on the basis that customer assets don’t become exchange property according to BitMart’s own User Agreement.

Another legal route on the table is whether qualifying creditors could force an involuntary insolvency case. The decision has not been made on moving forward with that option yet, per Echo Base.

Echo Base asked affected users to reach out to the [email protected] address.

Bitmart has not responded to Echo Base yet

Echo Base made the first move on BitMart on August 6 when it sent a written offer pledging as much as $10 million to bankroll a pre-negotiated bankruptcy that would cover professional and administrative costs through plan confirmation.

The offer also included debtor-in-possession financing and equity once the exchange emerged from restructuring, underwritten by Echo Base in its capacity as a claimholder.

In a second approach on August 8, an Echo Base affiliate sent a formal demand over a withdrawal request that BitMart had left unexecuted since July 24, roughly 31 hours before the exchange announced it was shutting down.

In that demand, Echo Base logged 15 attempts to reach BitMart, which did not turn up any legal or contractual explanation for the incomplete withdrawal attempts.

However, as of the September 2 call to the exchange’s users, Echo Base said BitMart had not replied to any of its approaches.

Echo Base and Bitmart aren’t working on the same timeline

Roshan Dharia, Echo Base’s chief executive, framed the standoff as a race against BitMart’s own timeline. “Administering a book this size takes years, and BitMart has publicly committed to a process it cannot staff past January,” he said in the statement.

He argued that without a court-supervised process, there is no automatic stay, meaning “a single claimant can stall the process for everyone.”

Dharia said the offer has sat open since August 6 and warned that the workable options shrink each week it goes unanswered. Echo Base added that it remains willing to negotiate a consensual wind-down with BitMart’s management and advisers, and reserved all legal rights in the meantime.

BitMart said on July 26 it would begin an orderly wind-down, halting new accounts, deposits and fresh orders the same day, with spot and futures trading due to end August 26.

Founder Sheldon Xia denied on August 8 that the exchange had run off with funds, telling users in a Chinese-language post that his team was still tallying assets, Cryptopolitan reported. He provided no figures, no dates and no proof-of-reserves report.

The numbers that are public do not reassure. CoinMarketCap data cited by Cryptopolitan showed BitMart self-reporting only about $5.36 million in reserves, most of it in its own BMX token, against daily trading volume near $272.6 million.

The exchange has promised a proof-of-reserves report since May 23 and has yet to publish one. It later floated a “potential restructuring and business resumption plan,” but the shutdown timeline still stands.