Tether-Backed Orionx Shuts Down After Audit Finds $7 Million Bitcoin (BTC) Custody Gap

Orionx Halts Withdrawals and Begins Wind-Down

Chilean cryptocurrency exchange Orionx started permanently closing its operations on Sept. 3 after a forensic audit uncovered a shortfall of more than $7 million in custodial customer assets. The company announced the decision through its official channels, and the exchange's closure notice on X confirms the start of a definitive shutdown process. Withdrawals remain suspended while the firm recalculates account balances, and management has stopped short of promising that every client will recover 100% of their holdings. According to the audit's comparison of internal records against onchain data, balances recorded for Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), XRP and Polygon (POL) exceeded the assets actually held at addresses under Orionx's control — a bookkeeping and custody mismatch rather than a breach of the underlying layer-1 networks themselves. The company says transactions moved custodial assets to wallets it does not manage, and it has filed a criminal complaint with Chilean prosecutors while preparing a restitution process intended to return as much as possible to customers. Orionx has not disclosed the affected wallet addresses, transaction hashes or a per-asset breakdown of the $7 million gap, leaving independent researchers unable to verify the full calculation. It has also not stated how many customers are affected or how much of the missing total might be recovered from external venues. Chile's Financial Market Commission added a stark caveat on Sept. 4: Orionx was neither registered nor authorized under the country's Fintech Law, its licensing application was rejected on June 19, and the regulator neither supervises the wind-down nor can compel repayments. Customers were advised to preserve account statements, transaction records and communications, and the exchange separately warned users never to share private keys, two-factor codes or transfers with anyone — a caution aimed at fraudsters targeting customers awaiting refunds.

closure notice on Xhttps://x.com/orionx/status/2095572606158307455

Complaint Names Two Cofounders

The criminal complaint, submitted on Sept. 2, targets former general manager Roberto Zibert and former technology manager Joaquín Díaz — both cofounders who allegedly held privileged access to the exchange's custody systems. Prosecutors are asked to investigate alleged unfair administration and any other offenses the evidence supports. Chilean newspaper La Tercera, citing the filing, reports that an account associated with Díaz received more than $1.5 million across 14 transfers, while a separate wallet allegedly received 187 ETH, more than 4.1 million USDT and 200,000 USDC from Orionx-related addresses. Zibert and Díaz have categorically rejected the accusations, saying they never acted against customer interests and that the cause of the deficit remains unresolved; the complaint opens an investigation and does not establish guilt. The discovery timeline is also coming into focus: chief operating officer Thomas Mac Millan flagged a significant mismatch between system balances and custody holdings on Aug. 27 during a compliance review tied to Chile's Fintech Law, after which the company commissioned the external forensic audit. Local reporting places the questioned transfers between 2018 and 2021, including to accounts on other platforms — a timing that remains an allegation rather than a judicial finding. The closure lands just 15 months after Tether led Orionx's Series A in June 2025 as part of a push to build stablecoin payments infrastructure across Chile, Peru, Mexico and Colombia. The stablecoin issuer has not publicly said whether it retained the investment, held board rights or received custody oversight reports, and it has not commented on the closure. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on MEXC.

Custody Risk and the Restitution Path

The Orionx collapse is, at its core, a counterparty-risk story: balances that existed in a database did not exist onchain. The most load-bearing primary document here is the regulator's own statement — Chile's CMF confirmed it rejected the exchange's authorization application on June 19, never supervised its activities and lacks any authority to order customer repayments, which leaves recovery dependent on the company's restitution process and Chilean prosecutors. Until Orionx publishes transaction hashes, outside researchers cannot test whether the missing funds passed through a crypto mixer or sit traceable at other venues. For customers, the practical lesson echoes a familiar one: choosing among the best crypto exchanges now means weighing licensing status and custody transparency, because an unlicensed platform can leave holders facing an effective slippage between recorded balances and what they ultimately recover.