Crypto chaos: Missing funds, rogue transactions at FTX
STORY: More chaos at embattled crypto exchange FTX….
The company – whose bankruptcy filing on Friday rocked the cryptoverse - said over the weekend that it had detected unauthorized transactions…
with analysts adding that millions of dollars of assets had been moved from the platform under what they called "suspicious circumstances".
The news comes after Reuters learned that at least $1 billion of customer funds have vanished from the company.
FTX’s stunning collapse capped a week-long saga that began with traders rushing to withdraw $6 billion from the company in just 72 hours… and an abandoned rescue deal by rival exchange Binance.
Sources told Reuters that FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried had secretly transferred $10 billion of customer funds from the exchange to his own trading company Alameda Research, and that a large portion of that – at least $1 billion - had disappeared.
Then on Saturday, blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said that around $473 million worth of crypto-assets were "moved out of FTX wallets in suspicious circumstances early this morning," but that it could not confirm that the tokens had been stolen.
FTX's dramatic fall from grace has seen its 30-year-old founder Bankman-Fried morph from being the poster child of crypto's successes to the protagonist of the industry's highest-profile crash.
Bankman-Fried, who lives in the Bahamas, has also been the subject of speculation about his whereabouts. On Saturday he told Reuters he was in the Bahamas, denying speculation on Twitter that he had flown to South America.
Some of the biggest names in sports, entertainment and finance invested in FTX, including Tom Brady and now ex-wife Gisele Bundchen and Kevin O'Leary of Shark Tank fame.
