An IC Markets customer reported being unable to close short positions in the NEARUSD cryptocurrency CFD on Sunday, October 18, saying repeated attempts returned an “order rejected” message and that the problem continued for approximately eight hours. A second Reddit participant described a similar difficulty closing a Bitcoin position earlier in the week.
The reports raise questions about cryptocurrency execution and trade-exit availability at the broker, but they remain unverified customer accounts. There is no independently verified order log, server incident notice or confirmation from IC Markets tying the two experiences to a common fault. Neither trader provided evidence of a realized financial loss.
What Did the NEARUSD Trader Report?
In an October 18 post on Reddit’s r/Trading forum, a user said they were holding short positions in NEARUSD and could not close them because the platform repeatedly rejected the orders. In a later comment, the poster said the issue was still continuing after roughly eight hours. The available thread does not identify the account’s legal entity, trading platform or server, and it does not show detailed execution logs.
Another participant replied that IC Markets cryptocurrency pairs had seemed unreliable to them during the week. That user said they had difficulty closing a BTC position on Tuesday, October 13, before it finally closed about an hour later. The account is independent in the sense that it came from a different Reddit participant; its authenticity and underlying trading records have not been verified.
Those details are enough to warrant a broker-specific question, but not a declaration that the broker suffered a confirmed outage. The two instruments, dates and users differ, and their accounts do not establish whether the same infrastructure was involved.
Could Weekend Trading Hours Explain the Rejected Orders?
Session availability is an important alternative explanation. IC Markets’ Bahamas help center says its cryptocurrency trading is not currently offered around the clock and tells clients to check each instrument’s trading hours. It also says attempts to trade outside an instrument’s session normally produce a “market is closed” message.
Separately, the IC Markets Global website advertises cryptocurrency CFD trading seven days a week, while warning that certain symbols might be unavailable over the weekend. These descriptions are not necessarily inconsistent: the broker operates through different entities, and each product may have its own trading timetable.
That distinction is particularly relevant because the initial complaint was made on a Sunday. The precise NEARUSD session, server clock, order timestamp and entity serving the customer are needed before a rejected instruction can be categorized as a technical malfunction. The wording “order rejected” is different from the example “market is closed” response in the help center, but an error label alone cannot establish root cause.
What Else Can Cause a CFD Close Order to Fail?
A cryptocurrency CFD is an agreement with a broker referencing a cryptocurrency price; closing it depends on the broker’s execution infrastructure and the availability of prices and liquidity under its terms. That is different from selling coins held directly on a cryptocurrency exchange.
IC Markets’ published CFD product disclosure describes several relevant risks, including limited market liquidity, volatile prices, communications failures and trade-execution delays. A position may be difficult to exit at the requested price when pricing becomes unreliable or counterparties withdraw liquidity. The disclosure describes general risks; it is not evidence that any one of them caused the Reddit incident.
Operational problems are another possibility. A stalled quote feed, mismatched volume increment, instrument-specific trading restriction, temporarily disconnected server or rejection by the price provider could create distinct symptoms. Without the complete rejection code and broker-side logs, selecting any one explanation would be speculation.
Prior incidents illustrate why the distinction matters. DaveFinances previously covered a confirmed CMC Markets order-processing disruption, where the firm’s own account of the event established facts missing here. A separate Revolut CFD customer complaint over a failed trade exit demonstrated how order problems can become financially consequential, but a complaint does not independently prove broker responsibility.
Why an Eight-Hour Exit Problem Would Matter to Traders
If the customer’s account is accurate and the position remained exposed for eight hours, the main risk is that the trader could not control their exposure during changing market conditions. A short NEARUSD position generally loses value when the underlying quoted price rises, although financing, spread, position size and margin rules also affect outcomes.
Even without a price move against the trader, repeated attempts to close a leveraged position can create uncertainty about available margin and the amount required to maintain it. An eight-hour window is long enough for meaningful price changes in a volatile cryptocurrency, but the Reddit post does not supply trade sizes or reliable entry and exit quotations from which to calculate any financial impact.
There is also a more general market-structure concern. Cryptocurrency trading runs continuously on underlying exchanges, but access to a broker-issued CFD can be subject to restricted sessions and liquidity-provider arrangements. A trader may therefore see an active spot market while an individual CFD cannot be traded under the same conditions.
That underscores why understanding previous customer complaints about IC Markets cryptocurrency transactions requires keeping execution, account funding and withdrawals separate. Problems in one process do not prove failures in another.
What Would Confirm Whether IC Markets Had an Execution Issue?
The next evidence should come from the broker’s trade and server records. IC Markets would need to establish whether it recorded rejected closing orders on NEARUSD on October 18, whether the market was open on the relevant account, and what rejection codes were returned. It would also be useful to know whether the BTCUSD complaint on October 13 involved the same execution server or liquidity provider.
If the failures occurred within a normal trading session, the key distinction would be whether the orders were rejected because of price or volume requirements, market liquidity, dealer-side risk checks or a technical defect. Any review of compensation would depend on account records, the relevant entity’s terms and the actual trading impact rather than the length of the Reddit discussion.
For affected clients, preserving screenshots, order timestamps, platform logs, symbol specifications and ticket numbers can make an execution complaint easier to investigate. Traders should also verify their contractual broker entity before contacting its complaints team.
For now, the verified story is the publication of two customer allegations, one involving an approximately eight-hour reported inability to close NEARUSD positions. The existence, scale and cause of any wider IC Markets service incident remain unconfirmed.
Johan Shamshad is a financial markets writer at Dave Finances covering cryptocurrencies, trading platforms, brokers, fintech, financial regulation, and developments across global markets. He previously worked at Gulf News, adding newsroom experience to his coverage of fast-moving financial and digital-asset markets.
His work focuses on identifying market-moving events, company developments, regulatory changes, product launches, and shifts in trading and financial infrastructure.
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