Didn’t think the FTX saga could get any worse? Well, it just did. Wayyyyy worse.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in funds were mysteriously siphoned out of the collapsing crypto exchange FTX on Friday, in what exchange officials have referred to as a potential “hacking” incident.
Already a company in a spectacular state of financial and reputational free fall, the once well-respected and heavily promoted cryptocurrency exchange said Friday that it was looking into a barrage of “abnormal” asset transfers sweeping through accounts. Subsequent analysis seemed to suggest that as much as half a billion dollars may have been stolen.
The chaos started late Friday when FTX account holders began taking to Twitter to allege that their funds had disappeared. At 11:52 p.m., an admin for the exchange’s Telegram page posted the following statement:
Not long afterward, Ryne Miller, the company’s general counsel, tweeted: “Investigating abnormalities with wallet movements related to consolidation of ftx balances across exchanges – unclear facts as other movements not clear. Will share more info as soon as we have it.”
Shortly afterward, Miller claimed that the company was routing remaining funds into cold storage—the offline accounts that keep assets secure from hacking—in an attempt to stop any more funds from being transferred.
