Australian crypto exchange Digital Surge suspends withdrawals
The Brisbane-based cryptocurrency exchange Digital Surge announced that they would be suspending deposits and withdrawals. "Due to the impact of FTX Australia's administration, we are not able to operate business as usual and have suspended all deposits and withdrawals until further notice," they wrote. They also disclosed in an email that they had "some limited exposure to FTX".
- "Aust crypto exchange suspends withdrawals", Shepparton News
BlockFi plans layoffs, possible bankruptcy after FTX collapse
Cryptocurrency lending company BlockFi suspended withdrawals on November 10 after the FTX collapse, an expected move since they had stayed afloat after the previous crypto meltdown only thanks to hundreds of millions in loans from FTX.
Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that BlockFi has been considering layoffs, and has been in talks with bankruptcy attorneys about a possible Chapter 11 filing.
Although BlockFi disputed reports that they had been custodying client assets at FTX, they acknowledged that they had "significant exposure to FTX and associated corporate entities that encompasses obligations owed to us by Alameda, assets held at FTX.com, and undrawn amounts from our credit line with FTX.US".
- "BlockFi Prepares for Potential Bankruptcy as Crypto Contagion Spreads", The Wall Street Journal
SALT crypto lender halts their service
The crypto lending firm SALT announced that they would be halting withdrawals due to exposure to FTX. "I am sorry to report that the collapse of FTX has impacted our business," they wrote in a message to users. "Until we are able to determine the extent of this impact with specific details that we feel confident are factually accurate, we have paused deposits and withdrawals on the SALT platform effective immediately."
Binance announces an "industry recovery fund"
CZ of Binance announced on Twitter that Binance would be forming an "industry recovery fund", which he says is intended for projects that are "otherwise strong, but in a liquidity crisis".
This not entirely unlike someone trying to sell you a house that is "otherwise sturdy, but in an engulfed-in-flames crisis".
He says the project is intended to reduce the "cascading negative effects of FTX", underscoring how nervous this whole debacle is making other players in the industry.
Ikigai Asset Management announces "large majority" of assets trapped in FTX
The founder and chief investment officer of the Californian crypto hedge fund Ikigai Asset Management wrote on Twitter, "Last week Ikigai was caught up in the FTX collapse. We had a large majority of the hedge fund's total assets on FTX. By the time we went to withdraw Monday mrng, we got very little out. We're now stuck alongside everyone else."
He announced that they would continue trading their remaining assets, and continue operating their venture fund. However, he said the future of the hedge fund was unclear, and likely to depend on what happens with FTX customer withdrawals.
"I'm pretty disgusted with the space as a whole and kinda humanity in general," he continued. "I'm at a loss for words at the depth & breadth of the pieces of shit that permeate crypto. So many fucking sociopaths were granted the opportunity to do so much damage. It's hard for me to imagine the space bouncing back quickly from this ordeal. Too many got burned too hard."
Huobi exchange announces $18.1 million is locked on FTX, mostly customer funds
Huobi announced to shareholders that they had $18.1 million in crypto assets on the FTX exchange, where they can't be withdrawn. They reported that approximately $13.2 million of those funds were customer assets. They announced that they would be taking an unsecured loan of up to $14 million from controlling shareholder Li Lin to cover the client assets.
AAX cryptocurrency exchange suspends withdrawals
The Hong Kong-headquartered cryptocurrency exchange announced that they would suspend withdrawals, which they claimed was due to a system upgrade that went poorly. They've estimated it will taken seven to ten days for normal service to resume.
Users have been hesitant to believe this explanation, given the enormous shakeup in the industry lately, and the tendency for firms to be less-than-forthcoming when they are in major crisis.
Three days prior, the company had published a blog post claiming that AAX had no exposure to FTX and its affiliated companies, that AAX had stable reserves, and that user funds were never exposed to counterparty risk.
Flare token rug pulls or is exploited for $17 million
Exploits and rug pulls of random tokens on BNB Chain are fairly commonplace, but typically the amount of money lost is fairly minimal. In this case, exploiters or insiders were able to siphon 3.9 billion $FLARE from the Flare project, which they swapped for just under $17 million.
This serves as a good example of how theft amounts shouldn't be naively calculated based on the token price before the theft × the number of tokens stolen. $FLARE was priced at around $18.25 before the attack, and a naive calculation would place the theft amount at $71 billion. However, the lack of liquidity caused the token price to plummet to $0.0000018, and the attacker ultimately ended up with around $17 million.
Over $4 million drained from DeFiAI
"Our contract has been hacked and has caused a lot of losses," wrote DeFiAI simply in their announcement. That same day, the project had announced the launch of a new website for their project.
The total funds stolen appear to be around $4.17 million, according to analysis by SlowMist.
- Tweet by DeFiAI
- Analysis by Slowmist
Tokensoft intentionally publishes personal data of around 5,000 users who they believe are "bad actors"
Tokensoft is a project that aims to help web3 projects launch fairly, without the launches being gamed. The group evidently thought they had come across 5,000 or so users who had been gaming airdrops, to which their solution was to publish a list of private user data about those individuals. The list included full names, wallet addresses, and physical and IP addresses.
Several users replied to the message in shock that their data was exposed, saying they'd never done anything wrong. The Tokensoft employee replied, "If you made it on the naughty list...yes, shame on you....I shared your info, better luck next time".
The project later deleted the link from the Discord server, then tried to claim that it had never been posted at all, then issued a statement that "information was mistakenly posted in Tokensoft's social media channels".