UK regulator warns of risks of trading on the Poloniex exchange

Previously, Justin Sun’s platform lost $130 million in a hack

08.12.2023 - 09:05

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3 min

What’s new? The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has issued a warning to investors about Justin Sun’s Poloniex crypto exchange after it was hacked. The statement said that the platform offers financial services and products without authorization from the authority and users should avoid interacting with it.

The FCA’s warning

What else is known? Companies and individuals cannot offer their financial services locally without an FCA license. Officials stressed that dealing with unlicensed service providers will prevent investors from relying on the authority’s support for legal recourse or compensation under the FSCS scheme if the provider goes bankrupt.

On November 10, a hacker withdrew $130 million in various cryptocurrencies from Poloniex. He also ignored the team’s offer of a reward of 5% of the stolen amount in exchange for the return of the remaining assets and a commitment not to contact the police. Justin Sun stated that the exchange remained solvent and pledged to reimburse users for their losses.

By December 5, the exchange restored deposit and withdrawal functions for some assets on the TRON blockchain, of which Sun is also the creator, including USDT, USDD, BTT, WIN, WIN, NFT, SUN, JST, USDJ, and USDC coins. The resumption of these features for other cryptocurrencies will be done gradually, the developers said.

On November 22, two other Sun projects — the HTX exchange and the Heco cross-chain protocol — lost another $113 million in a hack.

Damages from crypto project hacks totaled $349 million in November

The method of attack on most of the platforms is still unidentified

In addition, in late November, analysts noted that terrorists increasingly prefer to use TRON instead of the Bitcoin network because of the latter’s high speed and cheapness. The US non-profit organization, Campaign for Accountability, urged the Senate to pay attention to the fact that TRON is actively used by Palestinian groups.

Sun responded by saying that the project is committed to fighting terrorist financing, but its top priority remains maintaining decentralization.

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