Chilean cryptocurrency platform OrionX filed for voluntary liquidation with Santiago’s 15th Civil Court, with debts approaching $19,130 million, according to meganoticias.cl. The filing comes weeks after the company suspended operations and froze customer withdrawals.
Voluntary liquidation is, simply put, bankruptcy requested by the company itself. Instead of waiting for a creditor to sue, the company acknowledges that it cannot pay and asks the court to order its closure and distribute what remains.
According to the outlet, the problem came to light during an internal review launched by the new management to comply with the Fintech Law. That law regulates companies offering financial services through technology, such as payment platforms or cryptocurrency trading platforms.
Meganoticias, citing information published by La Tercera, reports that before suspending operations, the company filed a report with the Public Prosecutor’s Office and a criminal complaint alleging disloyal management. The legal action targets two founders and former partners: Joaquín Díaz, former chief technology officer, and Roberto Zibert, former chief executive officer.
The criminal complaint is based on an independent audit that detected unauthorized transfers of crypto assets, mainly Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP and Polygon, to digital wallets outside the company. A digital wallet works like an account where those currencies are stored.
The report compared OrionX’s internal books with the blockchain, the public transaction record that cannot be altered. Think of it as a ledger open to everyone and written in indelible ink. The result: a loss of US$6.98 million, more than $6,800 million.
The investigations found that the former executives allegedly authorized unrecorded transfers to external addresses and used customer funds to invest in platforms outside the company. For now, these are allegations by the company. The source does not report Díaz’s or Zibert’s account.
If you had money in OrionX, this is the detail that matters most to you: the firm, represented by lawyer Ariela Agosin, acknowledged a "current shortfall in assets". This means the available money is insufficient to cover either the peso balances or the cryptocurrencies held by its thousands of users.
The list of creditors also includes technology providers. Among the largest debts are those owed to Sumsub Tech Ltd., which verified users’ identities (a process known as KYC, for "know your customer"), and Fireblocks Ltd., which provided the infrastructure for safeguarding crypto assets. Amazon Web Services (AWS), which hosted the platform’s cloud servers, also appears on the list. The source does not specify the amount owed to each.
The next step falls to the court, which must appoint a liquidator. That person will take control of OrionX’s remaining assets, auction them off and pay creditors in the order established by law.
