NEW YORK, United States — The new chief executive of troubled
cryptocurrency platform FTX said Saturday the company was making “every effort
to secure all assets” following unauthorized transactions potentially worth
hundreds of millions of dollars.
اضافة اعلان
“Unauthorized
access to certain assets has occurred,” CEO John Ray said in a statement posted
to Twitter by FTX’s general counsel, Ryne Miller.
FTX officials
did not detail the quantity of unauthorized transactions made, but
cryptocurrency analysis firm Elliptic said in a report published Saturday that
“$477 million is suspected to have been stolen.”
More than “$663
million in various tokens” had been drained from FTX’s wallets only 24 hours
after it filed for bankruptcy, Elliptic said, with the difference “believed to
have been moved into secure storage by FTX themselves”.
FTX US and
FTX.com “continue to make every effort to secure all assets, wherever located,”
Ray, who specializes in corporate turnarounds, said in the statement.
The announcement
comes a day after
FTX filed for bankruptcy, part of a stunning collapse that
has reverberated through the relatively young sector, sending other
cryptocurrencies plummeting and drawing scrutiny from government regulators.
Additionally,
the platform’s chief executive, 30-year-old Sam Bankman-Fried, once considered
a star in the freewheeling cryptocurrency world, resigned.
As recently as
10 days ago, FTX was considered the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency
platform, at one point valued at $32 billion.
But the company
is now left trying to reassure a skeptical public.
Fall from grace
“Among other things, we are in the process of removing trading and
withdrawal functionality and moving as many digital assets as can be identified
to a new cold wallet custodian,” Ray said in the statement.
“Cold storage” refers to moving cryptocurrency
assets to a hardware “wallet” unconnected to the internet — to assure its
security.
Ray added that “an active fact review and mitigation
exercise was initiated immediately in response” to the unauthorized
transactions.
Overnight, Miller had tweeted about an investigation
into anomalies and other unclear movements, and by Saturday morning indicated
that “unauthorized transactions” had occurred.
FTX’s troubles first surfaced amid press reports
that its Alameda Research trading house was involved in a risky financial
arrangement with FTX.com that appeared to involve grave conflicts of interest.
Financial media reported that FTX executives knew
the platform was using billions in customer funds to prop up Alameda.
Adding to the drama, Binance, the world’s largest
crypto exchange, agreed to buy FTX.com on Tuesday — before scrapping the
takeover just a day later.
FTX is being investigated by both the US Securities
and Exchange Commission and the New York state Justice Department, according to
The New York Times, which cited sources close to those probes.
The fall from grace even stretched to the world of
sports, where the Miami Heat announced its FTX Arena is set for a rename and
the
Mercedes Formula One team said it had suspended a sponsorship deal with FTX
and removed the company’s logos from its cars ahead of this weekend’s Sao Paulo
Grand Prix.
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