Bahamas Securities Commission seized $3.5B in customers’ assets from FTX

According to a statement released on December 29, the Bahamian regulator Bahamas Securities Commission gained possession of digital assets valued at $3.5 billion at FTX Digital Markets shortly after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Tokens worth around $370 million were taken from the FTX exchange by an unknown actor, who is believed to have been an external hacker. This theft occurred not long after FTX filed for bankruptcy.

In light of media allegations of a cyberattack on FTX and the suspected theft of FTX users’ wallets by former workers, the regulatory agency stated in its statement that it believed there was considerable danger of immediate dissipation of the cryptocurrencies in the custody or control of FTX, which would be to the detriment of the exchange’s customers and creditors.

As a result, in the exercise of its regulatory powers, the commission requested and obtained a Court order to safeguard the digital assets owned by or under the custody or control of FTX or its principals by transferring them to secure digital wallets under the exclusive control of the commission.

Bahamas Securities Commission

According to the regulatory body, the assets are now being kept in a temporary manner. And after the transfer was finished, FTX founders Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang, as well as all other FTX executives, no longer have any access to the tokens, as stated in an affidavit that the executive director of the commission, Christina Rolle, submitted with the Bahamas Supreme Court.

The Bahamian Securities Commission has said that it has temporary and exclusive jurisdiction over the digital assets until such time as the Supreme Court of the nation grants the regulator permission to release the assets to the clients and creditors who are entitled to them or to the joint liquidators.

Authorities in the Bahamas are investigating the complex web of connections between the defunct online trading platform FTX.com and the trading business Alameda Research, which is associated with FTX.com.

The U.S. is investigating the hack

The Department of Justice in the United States is looking into the theft of $370 million from FTX, as reported by Cryptopolitan.

The federal prosecutors are keeping track of the assets, and they have been successful in freezing some of them, according to a story that was originally published by Bloomberg on December 27, which cited a person familiar with the matter. Nevertheless, the money that has been frozen is only given as a percentage of the total amount.

It is suspected that the breach resulted in the theft of over $650 million worth of bitcoin from the digital asset exchange located in the Bahamas, making it one of the most significant cryptocurrency hacks of 2022.

However, the petition for bankruptcy filed by FTX states that at least $372 million was taken, which suggests that there was some kind of error in the accounting of the monies that went missing.