Chilean Exchange Orionx Announces Permanent Shutdown and Withdrawal Suspension After Over $7 Million Shortfall, Claims Unable to Guarantee Full User Recovery
Chilean cryptocurrency exchange Orionx announced its permanent shutdown and withdrawal suspension after a legal audit confirmed that managed assets were transferred to wallets outside the company's control, resulting in a shortfall of over $7 million. The company stated it cannot guarantee users will recover their full amounts.
The company reported the case to the prosecutor's office and filed criminal lawsuits against co-founder and former CTO Joaquín Díaz and former CEO Roberto Zibert, alleging that related transactions occurred between 2018 and 2021, with assets used for speculation on other platforms. The audit compared the system's records with on-chain custody addresses, revealing discrepancies in the balances of Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Polygon (POL/MATIC). The criminal complaint initially quantified losses at approximately $6.06 million, with the amount potentially increasing; publicly, it stated over $7 million. COO Thomas Mac Millan initiated external evidence collection on August 27 after discovering inconsistencies in the accounts. The two accused founders denied harming customer interests. The current CEO is another co-founder, Joel Vainstein.
The platform claims to have over 100,000 registered users and has operated for about nine years, previously promoting over $2 billion in transactions. Tether exclusively led its Series A funding round in June 2025. The Chilean Financial Market Commission (CMF) rejected its financial service provider registration application in June 2026, clarifying that the platform is not under regulatory oversight and does not supervise any closure plans, advising users to retain their records and pursue legal avenues. The company suspended withdrawals to prevent a first-come, first-served advantage, stating it would attempt to return funds in phases.
The shortfall was exposed after the license application was rejected. Fintech laws require custody and suspicious transaction reporting, yet Orionx continued to operate publicly without authorization. The presence of coins on the books and insufficient on-chain addresses indicates that customer assets left the company wallet years ago. The phased return lacks a repayment ratio and timeline.
Mechanically, this is a failure of custody repayment, not market volatility. Buyers are users wanting to retrieve their coins, while sellers are the now-empty platform. Funds flowed from customer custody wallets to external addresses years ago, making it impossible to return them through the original route today. Beneficiaries are addresses that transferred coins between 2018 and 2021, while the burden falls on the 100,000 users after the withdrawal suspension and those who viewed the license application as a safety endorsement for later deposits; regulators rejected the registration, leaving repayment to criminal and civil procedures.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Orionx turned a nine-year local brand and Tether's investment into a safety narrative, but the audit pinned the loopholes before the licensing era. Assets were transferred out between 2018 and 2021, yet external investment and compliance advisors were only introduced in 2025, indicating that custody loopholes could survive for years under a growth narrative. The company only reconciled accounts after the CMF's rejection, meaning regulatory pressure forced the revelation of old accounts rather than proactive internal controls.
The capital path indicates that customer assets were diverted for other trading. The complaint describes external wallets and cross-platform speculation, essentially treating custody as proprietary inventory. Tether's Series A did not rewrite historical on-chain balances but merely elevated the reputational impact at closure. The phased return turns remaining liquidity into queued claims, with first-come, first-served being blocked by the withdrawal suspension, but the shortfall itself will not disappear due to queuing.
Analogies can be drawn to FTX's misuse of customer assets and several small Latin American exchanges revealing old shortfalls before licensing: during growth periods, customer coins were used to fill trades, and audits were supplemented only when regulators approached. The industry phase has shifted from gray fiat channels to licensed clearing, with control resting on on-chain addresses and prosecutors, not on platform announcements.
Structural judgments belong to regulatory changes. The mechanism is that unauthorized custody has no "official closure plan" legally, leaving users to pursue criminal charges and civil lawsuits; the licensing threshold escalates past misuse from an operational issue to an inability to repay.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
Having coins on the books does not mean they are still on-chain
Old custody loopholes will only be audited when the license application is rejected
Suspending withdrawals protects the order of distribution but cannot cover the already transferred shortfall