Crypto.com Sent $400M to the Wrong Recipient. Then Got It Back

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About three weeks ago Crypto.com "mistakenly sent 320,000 in Ethereum (~$416 million USD) to another cryptocurrency exchange, called Gate.io," reports the Verge's storystream (citing a report from Web3 Is Going Just Great).

In a post on Twitter, Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek says the company was supposed to send the crypto to one of its cold, or offline, wallets, but accidentally sent it to a "whitelisted" address belonging to its corporate account at Gate.io.

This all unfolded after Marszalek publicly posted the company's cold wallet addresses to provide transparency about what the exchange does with its funds. After digging into Crypto.com's transactions, one user, Conor Grogan, points out that the exchange sent 320,000 in Ethereum to Gate.io on October 21st, an amount that makes up about 80 percent of the company's Ethereum holdings.

Marszalek later added that it was able to recover "the entirety" of the transferred assets. Users on Twitter confirmed that Crypto.com received its funds back about a week later.... Gate.io also issued a response, noting that it started returning the funds once it realized the transfer was "an operation error." But hey, at least Crypto.com's funds were actually returned this time. In August, a pretty unfortunate typo resulted in Crypto.com giving a customer $7.2 million instead of a $68 refund, which it's currently suing to get back.

Despite the reassurances from Marszalek that "all our systems are operating normally," this whole ordeal is sparking withdrawals from the platform as users begin to worry whether Crypto.com will suffer the same fate as the now-bankrupt FTX and other beleaguered firms.