FTX, half a billion dollars disappeared 24 hours after the bankruptcy

Hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies I no longer have FTXthe intermediary – so to speak – for the sale of crypto in the eye of the storm for a week now for the management in chiaroscuro by the CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, and the subsequent bankruptcy. “FTX was hacked, the funds seem to have disappeared. FTX apps are malware, delete them. Do not go to the FTX website, it may download trojans“, wrote an administrator of the company’s Telegram channel in the past few hours.

That some assets have disappeared is an established fact, several sources write about it as well as the executives of the platform. On the numbers of the nest egg each analyst says about her, the figures fluctuate around half a billion dollars. On the end who have made the web debates: there are those who say that it was a clever move by the FTX board to steal funds before liquidation, then there is the official explanation of the Telegram channel and the FTX adviser Ryne Miller who talk about hacking. Some clues have led analysts to converge on this path.

Elliptic, a company that analyzes crypto flows, has estimated in more than 663 million dollars the traces left from the wallet to other shores. Of these, About 477 million would have been stolen, the remainder would be secured by the FTX board. The loot diversified, including Ethereum (278 million), Solana (106), Binance Smart Chain (89) and Avalanche (4). The hackers would have moved them to three distinct wallets, after about half of the loot (220 million) was converted to Ethereum or Dai (a stablecoin) with decentralized exchanges, “a popular tactic among thieves to try to avoid the seizure of stolen goods”writes Elliptic.

Now we are trying to trace those responsible also through the help of the community, but it will not be easy. The timing of the theft, which occurred 24 hours after the request for bankruptcy proceedings, made the web unleashed, and especially on Twitter, users abound convinced that it is a work of subtraction of funds by the top management, so as to secure what remains before the curators do the counting of assets to compensate those who is a victim of the FTX implosion. If something was done to steal capital, it would happen before the weekend hack.

Reuters reports that previously, the CEO had transferred approximately $ 10 billion from FTX client funds to Alameda Research, a trading firm owned by Sam Bankman-Fried. At least one billion of the 10 – some say 2 – would have vanished into thin air.