The Chilean cryptocurrency exchange Orionx, which is supported by the stablecoin issuer Tether (USDT), has announced a complete shutdown after an audit revealed the transfer of over $7 million in client assets to wallets not owned by the company.
Orionx announced the closure on the social network X. According to the exchange's representatives, the audit uncovered a discrepancy between the balances recorded in the company's internal systems and the assets actually held in its custodial wallets.
"Our only priority now is to return as much of their assets as possible to our clients," said Orionx in a statement. Withdrawals from the platform have been temporarily suspended.
The closure comes just 15 months after Tether led the exchange's Series A funding round as part of a strategy to expand the use of digital assets in Latin America.
The Orionx statement did not specify when the transfers exceeding $7 million occurred or how the discrepancy was discovered. According to the Chilean newspaper La Tercera, citing a police report filed by the exchange, Orionx conducted an internal review of its operations and hired financial specialists in 2025 in compliance with local law.
On August 27, Chief Operating Officer Thomas Mac Millan discovered a "substantial discrepancy" between the balances in Orionx's systems and the amount of assets actually held by the exchange, the statement said.
Following this, the company conducted an internal investigation and then commissioned an external forensic audit—an independent financial investigation conducted to find and confirm facts of fraud, corruption, theft, or other abuses within a company. The audit compared internal records with blockchain data and showed that the balances recorded in Orionx's systems exceeded the volume of assets in the exchange's custodial addresses for Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), XRP, and Polygon (POL). According to the statement, the withdrawal of assets from Orionx's custodial accounts occurred between 2018 and 2021, including transfers to accounts on other cryptocurrency platforms.
Accusations Against Co-founders
Orionx filed a police report against the company's former executives—Roberto Zibert and Joaquín Díaz, co-founders of the exchange, who allegedly had access to the systems for the custodial storage of cryptocurrency assets.
According to the report, an account linked to Díaz received over $1.5 million in 14 transfers, while another wallet, allegedly associated with the former executives, received 187 Ethereum, over 4.1 million USDT, and 200,000 USDC from Orionx addresses, reports La Tercera.
Zibert and Díaz have denied the accusations, stating that they never acted against the interests of clients and that the cause of the asset shortfall at Orionx has not yet been determined.
How Tether Became Involved with Orionx
Orionx was founded in Chile in 2017 and over the years grew from a small cryptocurrency exchange into a platform offering crypto payment services and financial services in Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico.
Tether invested in Orionx in June 2025, solely leading the exchange's Series A funding round, according to an archived version of the company's announcement. The original announcement on Tether's website is currently unavailable.
