Hackers Steal $415 Million in Crypto From FTX Exchange

The cryptocurrency exchange FTX announced on Tuesday that hackers had stolen approximately $415 million worth of cryptocurrencies and provided a report to its creditors detailing the theft.

FTX said that it had gotten back more than $5 billion in cryptocurrency, cash, and other liquid assets but that there still needed to be more liquidity at both its international and U.S. cryptocurrency exchanges. According to FTX, some of the shortfalls were due to hacking, which resulted in $323 million worth of cryptocurrency being stolen from its international exchange and $90 million worth of cryptocurrency being stolen from its U.S. exchange since the company filed for bankruptcy on November 11.

Indicted founder Sam Bankman-Fried later wrote a blog post in which he disagreed with parts of the company’s report.

FTX’s lawyers have presented an “extremely misleading” picture of the company’s finances to a court in London. He has been accused of stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers to pay debts incurred by his hedge fund.

Bankman-Fried said that FTX has more than enough money to pay back U.S. customers, who, based on his “best guess,” are owed anywhere from $181 million to $497 million. Since he quit as CEO in November, Bankman-Fried has yet to be able to look at FTX’s records.

A representative for Sullivan and Cromwell refused to say anything. In a recent court filing, lawyers for the firm said that they had turned down Bankman-request Fried to stay involved in the bankruptcy proceedings of the company.

Bankman-Fried has said that he is not guilty of fraud, and his trial is set for October.

FTX didn’t say how much it owed its U.S. or international customers and didn’t answer questions about Bankman-blog Fried’s post right away.

FTX said on Tuesday that it had found $1.7 billion in cash, 3.5 billion dollars in liquid cryptocurrency, and 300 million dollars in liquid securities as part of its recovery efforts. FTX’s total haul was $5.7 billion.

“We are making progress in our efforts to get as many people back on their feet as possible,” Ray said in a statement. “It took a Herculean effort by our team to find this preliminary information.”

Based on the prices of cryptocurrencies on November 11, 2022, the crypto assets that have been recovered so far are worth $685 million in Solana, $529 million in FTX’s FTT token, and $268 million in bitcoin. Bankman-Fried praised Solana, but it lost most of its value in 2022.

FTX’s first investigation into hacks into its system turned up a November seizure of assets by the Securities Commission of the Bahamas. This led to a fight between FTX’s bankruptcy team in the U.S. and Bahamian regulators.

In January, the two sides made up. On Tuesday, Ray said that the Bahamian government was holding $426 million for creditors.

Philip Davis, the PM of the Bahamas, talked about the dispute at an event on Tuesday at the Atlantic Council in Washington. He said that Ray’s team had “come around” and agreed that the Bahamian seizure of assets “was right and may have saved the day for many FTX investors.”

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