Status: 11/12/2022 8:02 p.m
The insolvent crypto exchange FTX has apparently lost more than a billion dollars in customer funds. The company speaks of “unauthorized transactions” – the media suspect a hacker attack.
The crypto exchange FTX is obviously struggling with mysterious outflows of money after filing for bankruptcy. There were “unauthorized transactions,” said the legal counsel of FTX’s US subsidiary, Ryne Miller, on Twitter. Accordingly, all digital assets are stored offline as a precaution. Miller did not disclose the volume of transactions affected or the alleged authors. There were irregularities in payment transactions. Many customers now fear for their money.
The news website CoinDesk, which specializes in cyber currencies, reported on a hacking attack on the crypto exchange. FTX was initially unable to comment on this.
Guessing about missing huge sums
British analytics firm Elliptic suggested that $473 million in crypto assets were stolen from FTX on Friday night. They would be exchanged for the cryptocurrency ether on decentralized exchanges – a procedure that hackers often used to forestall a seizure of their loot.
The news agency Reuters reports, however, that according to insiders, at least one billion dollars in customer funds are said to have disappeared. The firm’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, secretly transferred $10 billion in client funds from FTX to his own trading firm, Alameda Research, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters. A part of this sum has since disappeared. FTX was already known to have moved client funds to Alameda, however the amount was never quantified. Insiders, who held senior positions at FTX prior to the crypto exchange’s bankruptcy, estimated the missing amount to be between $1 billion and $2 billion.
Dorothee Holz, HR, on the crash of the crypto exchange FTX
Tagesschau 5:00 p.m., 11/11/2022
Turmoil in the crypto market
The Bahamas-based company filed for bankruptcy on Friday after a rush of customer withdrawals earlier in the week. The 30-year-old ex-Wall Street trader Bankman-Fried was desperately looking for fresh capital to save the cryptocurrency trading platform, which was only founded three and a half years ago. A rescue attempt with the competing exchange Binance failed. Several states then froze FTX assets to limit the impact of a stock market collapse on the industry.
FTX’s plight caused turmoil in the cryptocurrency market. The oldest and most important cryptocurrency Bitcoin and number two Ethereum have lost significant value in the past few days. However, Bitcoin has been under pressure for a long time. In the past twelve months, it lost around 70 percent of its value. In the US, calls for stricter regulation of the industry grew louder. The crypto brokerage house Alameda Research, which is connected to FTX, and around 130 other companies also fled under the creditor protection according to Chapter 11 of the US bankruptcy code.