Orionx, the Santiago crypto exchange that Tether led through a Series A in June 2025, announced a permanent shutdown after a forensic audit confirmed more than $7 million in customer assets had moved to wallets the company does not control. Withdrawals are suspended while a restitution plan runs.
That is the hard fact for more than 100,000 registered accounts: the balances on the screen no longer match coins the exchange can move.
What Orionx says happened
On its homepage, Orionx says an external forensic audit found transactions that sent custodial assets to wallets “not administered by the Company,” for an amount “that exceeds seven million dollars.” The firm filed a complaint with Chile’s Ministerio Público and, on 2 September 2026, a criminal lawsuit against former executives it holds responsible. The public notice names neither person; Chilean press and Cointelegraph identify co-founders Roberto Zibert and Joaquín Díaz.
La Tercera, citing the criminal complaint, reports that chief operating officer Thomas Mac Millan spotted a “significant mismatch” between internal balances and custody holdings on 27 August. An internal review followed, then the forensic audit that compared company books with on-chain data. Gaps covered Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, and Polygon (POL). BioBioChile puts the audited shortfall on those four assets near $6.06 million, with the company’s public figure still above $7 million as investigators look at more coins.
The complaint, as reported by La Tercera and Cointelegraph, places the disputed transfers between 2018 and 2021, including moves to accounts on other platforms. One account tied to Díaz allegedly received more than $1.5 million across 14 transfers; another wallet allegedly received 187 ETH, more than 4.1 million USDT, and 200,000 USDC. Zibert and Díaz deny the charges and say they never acted against customers’ interests. Those are allegations in a live criminal case, not adjudicated facts.
The regulator was already out of the picture
Chile’s Comisión para el Mercado Financiero (CMF) stated on 4 September that Orionx SpA is not inscribed or authorized under Ley N° 21.521 (the Fintech Law) and is therefore not a supervised entity. The firm had applied for registration; the CMF rejected that request by Oficio Ord. N° 104672 on 19 June 2026. Until rejection, Orionx sat under the law’s transitional regime. After rejection, it could only wind down existing operations, not open new ones, and it never posted the guarantees licensed providers must show.
The CMF is explicit about what it will not do: it does not run Orionx’s closure, and it cannot order restitution of client funds. Customers must deal with the company, keep statements and trade records, and pursue civil or criminal remedies through the courts if they choose. A pending Fintech licence application is not a licence. It never was.
Tether’s LatAm bet, fifteen months later
Orionx launched in Chile in 2017 and later marketed crypto payments and financial services across Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Mexico. Tether’s June 2025 Series A lead framed the deal as LatAm digital-asset adoption. An archived copy of that announcement still circulates; the live page on tether.io no longer does. Cointelegraph says it asked Tether and Orionx for comment and had not heard back by publication. Treat the deleted press note as a sourcing detail, not a verdict on Tether’s current position.
The sequence that matters for users is simpler. A regional exchange took institutional capital, failed Chile’s Fintech authorization, then disclosed a multi-million-dollar custody hole and froze withdrawals. Brand-name backing did not keep the coins in wallets the company controlled.
What holders should do now
If you still have a balance on Orionx, treat every cold call, WhatsApp “support” chat, and cloned login page as a theft attempt. Orionx’s own notice warns it will never ask for passwords, 2FA codes, or transfers by phone, chat, email, or social media. Use only orionx.com, save account statements and transaction history, and follow the company’s published restitution stages. The CMF will not recover the coins for you.
The deeper lesson is the one this desk keeps repeating when an exchange fails: coins on an exchange are the exchange’s coins. Self-custody does not fix a shortfall that already happened, and it does not make an unauthorized platform legal. It does mean the next platform’s freeze, hack, or founder dispute cannot empty an address only you can open. Move what you can control before you need the exit. This is reporting on a shutdown and a criminal complaint, not advice to buy, sell, or leave funds on any venue.
