MajesticBank and Monero: Funding, Warnings and Shutdown

MajesticBank announced its closure on July 23, 2025. Its public account acknowledged pending orders and promised refunds. The announcement did not explain why the exchange was closing beyond describing its Monero mission as nearly complete. The available record establishes a shutdown, documented community involvement and unresolved refund reports. It does not establish a police seizure or explain where all customer funds went. The operator's announcement remains the starting point.

MajesticBank made its Monero relationships public while leaving its legal ownership unexplained. It paid website hosting costs, appeared on conference sponsor lists and supplied an exchange integration used by a wallet. The project account also secured a seat on a funding committee. Those relationships help explain its familiarity within the community. None amounted to a guarantee that a customer would receive a payout.

This investigation separates recipient acknowledgments, software records, operator statements and allegations. The original source review was completed on November 8, 2026 UTC. Archive and certificate-transparency access was rechecked on November 11. No interviews or private customer records form part of the evidence.

Origins

A Bitcointalk announcement dated November 15, 2021 introduced MajesticBank as a new BTC/XMR exchange. It advertised no identity checks and outlined future API and wallet-storage features. This is a dated public introduction, not proof of the first transaction or a legal incorporation date.

The post listed majesticbank.sc and majesticbank.so alongside .ru, .su and .is domains. It also advertised a Tor onion service. The early presentation already used five domains. A domain change alone cannot tell us whether the operator or brand changed.

The announcement contains a PGP signature block. We have not independently verified that signature against an authenticated historical key. Its presence alone cannot establish who operated the service. Nor does the word bank establish a banking licence. The reviewed records did not identify a legal entity responsible for the exchange.

An Internet Archive capture index lists a December 14, 2021 capture of the .sc homepage. Our November 11 retry retrieved the archived page, which shows an exchange interface listing BTC, LTC and XMR, plus a 2021 copyright footer. This confirms what the service advertised at that date, not completed trades, legal ownership or a launch date.

Money and sponsorships

The clearest financial record is a recipient acknowledgment. On April 27, 2022, binaryFate confirmed a $6,000 payment covering getmonero.org hosting for May, June and July. A further comment corrected the proposed description: this paid for hosting, while Tari Labs funded the CDN. Its total spending on Monero remains unknown.

Haveno's source history supplies another direct connection. A February 28, 2022 commit added MajesticBank to its sponsors. The commit does not disclose a donation amount or contractual rights. Haveno's current sponsor policy explicitly separates sponsorship from endorsement. MajesticBank no longer appears on that page, but its removal date remains unknown.

The distinction matters for readers using RetoSwap, a network built on Haveno software. A historical donation to the software project does not establish ownership of that network or of its users' trades.

MoneroKon's official archives list MajesticBank as a sponsor in 2022, 2023 and 2025. These are separate event records. They do not show an uninterrupted contract or the value of each sponsorship.

In May 2022, Monero Observer reported an offer of 40 conference tickets, plus flights for ten applicants and accommodation for five. An offer is not a receipt. No allocation list or expenditure accounts were available to check whether attendees received all the promised help.

MAGIC's relationship was different. Its January 23, 2023 election results named MajesticBank among three elected Monero Fund committee members, with terms beginning January 31. On April 24, the board announced its removal for inactivity. It said MajesticBank attended the first meeting but not later weekly meetings. The stated reason was attendance, not financial misconduct. Describing MajesticBank as a continuing committee member after that announcement would be wrong.

One frequently repeated donation figure needs qualification. An April 19, 2023 Monero Observer report attributed approximately 74.5 XMR sent to the General Fund to MajesticBank. In the linked public discussion, plowsof11 acknowledged legitimate General Fund receipts but said MajesticBank's posted proof was for Feather Wallet. The record supports reporting the attribution, not claiming that we independently verified a 74.5 XMR payment from this exchange to that recipient.

A November 2023 CCS wallet proposal also documents MajesticBank's participation in community funding discussions. Posting a proposal establishes neither custody of CCS funds nor adoption of the proposed arrangement. Its total developer funding remains unknown.

Mapping MajesticBank's Connections

The map documents funding, technical integrations and public associations. A connection does not imply ownership, endorsement or guilt. Solid lines identify documented relationships. Dashed lines identify relationships supported by attributed reporting. Unknown dates remain unknown rather than implying that a relationship continued until today.

Open the larger connection map. The source-linked table below remains available without JavaScript. Selecting a timeline event highlights the corresponding connections.

People and public identities

The author signed the closure statement As Phoenix. That links the pseudonym to a public statement, not to a verified legal identity. The MajesticBank GitHub account dates to January 6, 2022. The exchange's launch predates that account.

The 2022 conference-ticket report linked the Reddit account MajesticLabs as a contact. Public discussions also show a MajesticBank account speaking on IRC and Matrix, while the closure announcement supplied Telegram and email contacts. These are communication channels and attributed public identities. This investigation did not establish whether one person controlled them all or whether more than one operator shared them.

Domain suffixes say little about an operator's nationality. The public pseudonyms and forum speculation were insufficient to identify ownership. The absence of a verified corporate identity leaves an accountability gap, but it does not by itself establish criminal conduct.

Warnings and interruptions

On August 24, 2022, Monero Observer reported a warning by Dread administrator Paris after deletion of MajesticBank's subforum and administrator content. The report relayed complaints about missing payments and attributed an exit-scam warning to Dread staff. The original onion discussion was unavailable for this review. The account of its contents rests on the contemporary report.

An August 25 update said KYCNOT.me's pluja had tested small trades up to 0.5 XMR successfully. Those trades show that the service still fulfilled some orders. They cannot resolve other complaints or show reserves for larger orders. The same report recorded another website outage on August 31.

The pattern recurred in March 2023. Contemporary reporting on KYCNOT.me's delisting described downtime and delayed payments, then recorded relisting on March 31 when the domains were back up. Relisting showed a directory decision following restored availability. Outstanding liabilities remained outside that assessment.

MajesticBank's March 28 public response denied a scam and attributed the interruption to upgrades. Other participants challenged accepting an order during maintenance. Both the denial and the criticism belong in the record. Neither resolves the underlying accounting.

An April update attributed further problems to attacks on its Monero nodes, particularly through Tor. A defensive configuration gist published by MajesticBank is independently retrievable. This confirms publication of mitigation advice, without measurements of the disruption, attribution of its source or an explanation for missed payments.

Infrastructure and exchange comparisons

Stack Wallet's February 11, 2023 release explicitly added MajesticBank swaps. Its historical API code used majesticbank.sc and /api/v1/ endpoints. Order calls included a fixed referral-code parameter. This verifies integration and referral functionality. Commission rates, payments to the wallet project and ownership remain undocumented.

That is a stronger connection than two services appearing in the same directory. For eXch, TradeOgre, Elude Exchange, Infinity Exchange and SideShift.ai, this investigation did not establish a common operator, shared treasury or direct operational partnership with MajesticBank. The map leaves those exchanges unconnected.

Historical DNS and certificate records could help establish when infrastructure changed. On November 11, queries to crt.sh for majesticbank.sc and majesticbank.is returned HTTP 502 Bad Gateway rather than timing out. We obtained no certificate records, so the historical hosting sequence remains unverified. Third-party reputation pages naming a provider were not treated as proof of backend ownership. A shared hosting company would not be enough to establish that relationship anyway.

The evidence register preserves the historical onion address and domains for identification. We did not verify who controls them now. We did not send exchange requests or make transactions.

Shutdown and refunds

The July 23 announcement offered a 30-day refund period and premiums of $100 to $500 depending on order value. It also promised unspecified farewell donations. In a reply, the account confirmed that MajesticBank would close rather than continue under another service.

Monero's website removed the exchange listing through PR #2497, merged that day. PR #2498, merged July 24, moved it to past sponsors. The website changes leave the reason for closure unexplained.

KYCNOT.me's record says users reported receiving some refunds on July 23. A July 28 forum discussion then repeated the directory's warning about an absent administrator and unresolved refunds. Those posts are not independent evidence for each customer's payment. No reviewed account reconciled repayments with outstanding obligations.

The current directory page dates its administrator-disappearance warning to a 2026 event range, although the warning appears in the July 2025 forum discussion. We have retained that discrepancy. The page's current archived/scam status is a directory judgment. Neither that judgment nor the page's resolved event label confirms repayment.

The reviewed sources contain no receipts for the farewell donations. Earlier gifts cannot account for this later promise.

The documented history runs from a public exchange launch through sponsorships to a closure with incomplete public refund accounting.

Timeline

• 2021-11-15. Public BTC/XMR exchange announcement. Confirmed. launch.
• 2022-02-28. Haveno sponsor addition. Confirmed. haveno.
• 2022-04-27. $6,000 hosting payment acknowledged. Confirmed. hosting.
• 2022-05-28. 40-ticket MoneroKon offer reported. Reported. tickets.
• 2022-08-24. Dread warning reported. Reported. dread.
• 2023-01-31. MAGIC committee term begins. Confirmed. magic-election.
• 2023-02-11. Stack Wallet integration release. Confirmed. stack.
• 2023-03-25. KYCNOT.me delisting reported. Reported. downtime.
• 2023-03-31. KYCNOT.me relisting reported. Reported. downtime.
• 2023-04-19. General Fund donation report. Reported. donation-report, donation-log.
• 2023-04-24. MAGIC removes inactive committee member. Confirmed. magic-removal.
• 2023-11-08. CCS wallet proposal posted. Confirmed. ccs.
• 2025-07-23. Shutdown announced and exchange delisted. Confirmed. closure, delisting.
• 2025-07-24. Moved to past Monero sponsors. Confirmed. past-sponsor.
• 2025-07-28. Forum repeats directory refund warning. Reported. forum-closure, kyc.
• 2026-11-08. Research cutoff: total refunds still unverified. Unknown. kyc.

Was law enforcement involved?

Searches of official DOJ, HSI/ICE, Europol, Eurojust, BKA, Treasury and regulator domains did not identify an announcement naming MajesticBank as the target of a seizure or prosecution. The search record also includes public court-index queries. This is a bounded negative finding, not proof that no investigation exists. Sealed proceedings and unpublished inquiries would not necessarily appear.

Official records do document a separate action against eXch. A May 9, 2025 FIOD statement says German authorities seized its server infrastructure on April 30. The statement names eXch. It supplies no evidence of an action against MajesticBank.

The defensible classification is an announced shutdown with unexplained circumstances and unresolved refund reports. Voluntary closure, financial failure, regulatory pressure and an exit scam are different explanations. The reviewed evidence does not settle which explains the disappearance.

Unresolved accounting

MajesticBank gained visibility through concrete contributions and integrations. Its hosting payment received an acknowledgment. Software history and recipient records document other relationships. The record also contains repeated operational warnings, a funding-committee removal and a shutdown promise whose financial outcome remains incomplete.

The documented contributions and refund complaints concern different obligations. Sponsorship receipts cannot reconcile customer balances. For readers comparing exchange arrangements, the relevant distinction is who controls funds during a trade. Our atomic-swap guide explains how protocol-enforced settlement differs from sending funds to an operator and awaiting a payout.

The remaining questions concern legal responsibility and the reason operations ended. Customers also lack a verified accounting of repayments and money still owed. Recipient evidence, business records or an official finding could answer them. Until then, the gaps belong in the story.