During an “ask me anything” (AMA) live session with users on Monday, Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek explained that the company sent large amounts of stablecoins to the troubled cryptocurrency exchange FTX to fulfill customer order liquidity at the time FTX was still in operation. According to Marszalek:
“Over a year $1 billion was transferred to FTX and we got all of this back. We only had less than $10 million exposure when FTX closed. And FTX was one of the few trading venues with decent liquidity for some of the coins like the ones I mentioned before.”
During the session, Marszalek assured users that the exchange was not stopping withdrawals. However, a higher volume of requests has caused a backlog of customer support tickets. The head of Crypto.com then stated that only three coins, two of which are FTX tokens and one of which is a security token, currently have their withdrawal features suspended on the exchange.
Marszalek also denied allegations that the exchange was using its native token, CRO, as collateral for loans: “We’ve never used it, and we haven’t needed to use it,” he said, noting that the exchange has a “very simple business that generates a pretty decent amount of income,” opting to focus in that direction instead.
Lastly, in response to users wondering why roughly 20% of the exchange’s reserves are in the Shiba Inu (SHIB) memecoin, Marszalek explained that they were simply customer deposits:
“And it just so happens that last year, DOGE and SHIB were two extremely famous meme coins. And people bought them a lot. And they hold them; they didn’t sell them. We have no control over what you buy. You buy; we’ll start holding them.” safe”.
Like many other exchanges, Crypto.com has seen a wave of withdrawals following the collapse of FTX. The company also became the target of a wide range of conspiracy theories on Twitter after it was discovered that the exchange accidentally sent 320,000 Ether (ETH) to Gate.io before recovering the funds shortly after.
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