A forensic audit turned up more than $7 million in custodial assets that had left Orionx’s wallets, and the Tether-backed Chilean exchange is shutting down for good.
Orionx announced the closure Thursday on X and said withdrawals were temporarily suspended. “Our sole priority now is to return as much of our clients’ assets as possible,” the company wrote. How much of the shortfall is recoverable, and when, went unsaid.
The audit checked Orionx’s internal books against onchain-verifiable data. Balances in the exchange’s systems exceeded what it actually held at custody addresses for bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), XRP, and Polygon (POL). The transfers spanned multiple years. A criminal complaint filed Wednesday alleges assets moved out of Orionx custody between 2018 and 2021, in some cases landing in accounts on other crypto platforms.
How the gap surfaced
The discrepancy came to light during a compliance review tied to Chile’s Fintech Law, Chilean outlet La Tercera reported, citing the company’s criminal complaint. On Aug. 27, chief operating officer Thomas Mac Millan flagged a “significant mismatch” between recorded balances and assets in custody.
An internal review followed. Orionx then brought in an outside forensic auditor. The exchange did not name the firm. It also did not say when the transfers took place or how the shortfall first emerged beyond the Aug. 27 finding.
Founders named in criminal complaint
Orionx filed a criminal complaint against former executives Roberto Zibert and Joaquín Díaz, both co-founders with alleged access to the company’s crypto custody systems.
The complaint, per La Tercera, alleges that an account tied to Díaz received more than $1.5 million across 14 transfers. A separate wallet allegedly took in 187 ether, more than 4.1 million USDt (USDT), and 200,000 USDC from Orionx.
Zibert and Díaz denied the allegations, Chilean outlet La Cuarta reported, saying they never acted against customers’ interests and that the cause of the shortfall remains unclear.
Tether’s investment, now a footnote
Tether led Orionx’s Series A in June 2025, exclusively, part of a broader push to expand digital asset adoption in Latin America. The closure comes roughly 15 months later.
Tether’s original announcement of the round is no longer on its website. An archived version lives on web.archive.org. Cointelegraph said it reached out to Tether and Orionx for comment and had received no response by publication.
What happens to customers
Orionx was founded in Chile in 2017 and grew from a retail exchange into a platform offering crypto payment and financial services across Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico. The company has not outlined a customer recovery process beyond its stated priority of returning assets.
Withdrawals remain suspended. The criminal complaint is pending. No regulator has commented publicly.
