Inside an Exit Scam
An exit scam has a shape, and once you have seen it once you see it everywhere. It starts quietly, with withdrawals slowing, and it ends with a market that is no longer there and a wallet that was never meant to be a vault. Here is the sequence, and the one design choice that removes it.
The warning signs
Withdrawals slow first. A day becomes two, two becomes a week. The forum thread about it gets pinned, then the replies get shorter. The market is still up, the listings are still there, and the only thing that has changed is that getting your own money out takes longer. That is the start, and it is the only window you have to act.
The end
The address stops resolving, the forum goes quiet, and the wallet that held the deposits is gone. The buyers who kept a large balance are the ones who feel it most, because the balance was the exposure. The buyers who treated the wallet as a checkout buffer walk away with the order they confirmed and nothing more.
The design that prevents it
Escrow. When your money is held in a contract that releases on your confirmation, there is no single platform wallet to run off with. The market can go down, but it cannot take what is in escrow. That is the structural difference, and it is the first thing to check on any market before you put a real balance on it.