Orionx Halts Withdrawals as Audit Finds $7M Custody Gap

Orionx, a Chilean crypto exchange backed by stablecoin issuer Tether, is shutting down permanently after a forensic audit found that more than $7 million in customer assets recorded on its books had been moved to wallets the company does not control. Withdrawals are temporarily suspended, and Orionx has not disclosed when the transfers occurred or exactly how the discrepancy was first uncovered.

Orionx begins permanent closure after custody audit

Orionx said it has entered a permanent closure process after uncovering evidence of a custody-related shortfall, according to a company announcement shared on X on Thursday. The exchange commissioned a forensic audit that compared its internal records against data verifiable onchain, and the results showed that balances recorded in Orionx’s systems exceeded the assets actually held at its custody addresses.

The gap spanned four major assets: Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), XRP, and Polygon (POL). That kind of mismatch across multiple asset types is the exact failure mode that proof-of-reserves systems are designed to catch before it reaches this scale, and its emergence here raises fresh questions about how closely custody attestations were tracked in the years before the audit was run.

Orionx has not said when the more-than-$7-million in transfers took place or what specifically triggered the review that found them. Customers are left with a suspended platform and a company that says its focus has shifted entirely to recovery – a pattern users of other shuttered platforms will recognize, including the fallout customers faced when Binance exited the Russian market and had to navigate uncertain access to their own funds.

Orionx’s statement to customers

In its announcement, Orionx framed the closure entirely around asset recovery rather than continued operations. “Our sole priority now is to return as much of our clients’ assets as possible,” Orionx said, adding that withdrawals are being held while that process plays out.

The statement did not include a timeline for resolution, nor did it specify how much of the shortfall, if any, the company expects to recover.

Tether’s investment and the exchange’s regional footprint

The shutdown lands roughly 15 months after Tether exclusively led Orionx’s Series A funding round in June 2025, a deal the stablecoin issuer framed at the time as part of its push to expand digital asset adoption across Latin America, according to an archived version of Tether’s announcement cited by Cointelegraph. That announcement is no longer live on Tether’s website.

Founded in Chile in 2017, Orionx had grown from a retail exchange into a platform offering crypto payment and financial services across Chile, Peru, Colombia and Mexico. A strategic backer with Tether’s profile lending credibility to a regional exchange is not itself a custody guarantee, and this case is a reminder that funding rounds don’t audit wallet balances – a distinction that echoes concerns raised after other platform disruptions, including the Tectonic exploit that forced a halt on Cronos.

What the audit and complaint establish – and what remains alleged

According to reporting from Chilean newspaper La Tercera, cited in Cointelegraph’s coverage, Orionx conducted an internal operations review in 2025 tied to compliance efforts under Chile’s Fintech Law and brought in outside financial professionals. On Aug. 27, chief operating officer Thomas Mac Millan reportedly flagged a “significant mismatch” between system-recorded balances and what was actually held in custody, according to the criminal complaint.

That internal review led to the external forensic audit, and from there to a criminal complaint Orionx filed against former co-founders Roberto Zibert and Joaquín Díaz, both of whom allegedly had access to the company’s crypto custody systems. The complaint reportedly alleges that assets were transferred out of Orionx’s custody between 2018 and 2021, including to accounts on other crypto platforms – a period that predates the 2025 review by several years.

Per La Tercera’s reporting, the complaint alleges an account associated with Díaz received more than $1.5 million across 14 separate transfers, while another wallet allegedly received 187 ETH, more than 4.1 million USDT, and 200,000 USDC from Orionx. Zibert and Díaz have denied the allegations, saying they never acted against customers’ interests and that the actual cause of the shortfall remains unclear.

None of this establishes criminal liability. The complaint represents one side’s allegations, the audit represents a records discrepancy, and the connection between the two – whether the alleged 2018-2021 transfers fully account for the more-than-$7-million gap – has not been independently confirmed.

Investigation, withdrawals and customer recovery

Withdrawals remain suspended as of publication, and Orionx has said returning client assets is its only remaining priority. The exact timing of the transfers and the method by which the mismatch was first detected are still unaddressed in the company’s public statements, leaving customers with limited visibility into how much of their holdings might ultimately be recoverable.

The criminal complaint against Zibert and Díaz is now in the hands of Chilean authorities, and any further legal action – civil or criminal – will likely take months to unfold. Cointelegraph said it contacted both Tether and Orionx for comment but had not received a response by the time of publication, leaving the two named companies at the center of this story without an on-record account of what happened between 2018 and now.

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