Crypto Exchange dYdX Ends Contentious Promo Amid a Wave of Backlash

A wave of criticism over its facial recognition restrictions for new members led decentralized cryptocurrency derivatives exchange dYdX to announce that it has canceled its contentious and brief $25 first deposit bonus promotion. The exchange’s brief promotional campaign, which concluded on Thursday “effective immediately,” was justified, it claimed, by “overwhelming demand.” dYdX Launched a $25 Bonus for New Users The promotion in question began on Wednesday and gave new customers a $25 incentive if they made a $500 or higher platform deposit. The only caveat was that, to authenticate their identity, users had to agree to a “liveness check” using a webcam, which didn’t sit well with some community sections. After purportedly enrolling thousands of new customers, about 24 hours later, dYdX stated that it would discontinue the program “due to overwhelming demand.” Due to extremely overwhelming demand of the $25 deposit bonus promotion, we are ending the campaign, effective immediately. Thank you to the many thousands of new users that onboarded to dYdX today. We truly underestimated the amount of interest the campaign garnered. — dYdX (@dYdX) September 1, 2022 When the DEX was first announced, the promotion campaign’s duration was not specified by the DEX team. It “underestimated the level of interest the campaign attracted,” nonetheless. Notably, dYdX did not address the backlash from the community in its most recent tweet but...