Aussie Regulator Terminates FTX Australia’s License

The Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) suspended the FTX Australia license until May 15, 2023, following the exchange’s recent fiasco.

The crash has affected around 30,000 Aussie consumers who are exploring how to retrieve their funds.

The Latest Strike on FTX

Despite the termination of its license, FTX’s Australian subsidiary will be able to provide limited services to local customers until December 19, 2022.

The ASIC reminded that the crypto exchange had permission to “provide general advice relating to derivatives and foreign exchange contracts to retail and wholesale clients.” The meltdown of FTX, though, changed the trends, and the regulator had to take severe measures to protect domestic users.

“ASIC is monitoring this situation closely and speaking regularly with international regulators and the external administrators. ASIC encourages clients of FTX Australia to carefully monitor the situation and look out for updates by the FTX Group, as well as from FTX Australia’s administrators,” the agency alerted.

The suspension comes a few days after the authorities appointed John Mouawad, Scott Langdon, and Rahul Goyal (part of the advisory firm KordaMentha) to help local victims restore some of their assets after the crash.

A recent coverage informed that at least 30,000 Australians and over 130 companies had suffered losses due to the crisis.

The Domino Effect

The collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto platform has sent shock waves through the entire sector. The digital asset market plunged way below $1 billion, while most coins lost a significant chunk of their value (bitcoin being down around 10% for the past week).

Concerned about their funds stored in other exchanges, many individuals started withdrawing en mass. As CryptoPotato reported, more than $8 billion worth of crypto has departed from trading venues between November 6 and November 14.

Leading entities in the field displayed their audited proof of reserves to customers to show maximum transparency and reduce the catastrophe’s impact. Some went even further, introducing recovery funds that could help clients in case of an emergency.

Binance – the world’s largest crypto exchange – topped up its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) to $1 billion, while OKX vowed to distribute $100 million across affected projects and such that are willing to migrate from Solana.