FTX to Refund Phishing Victims With a $6 Million Compensation

According to its CEO, FTX will be offering $6 million compensation to victims ofthe recent phishing attack “in a one-time thing”.

FTX’s chief executive officer Sam Bankman-Fried tweeted that he’s willing to remunerate a up to $6 million compensation for users victims of a multimillion-dollar phishing scam.

“In general we can't compensate for users getting phished by fake versions of other companies in the space! It isn't FTX and we have basically no control over it,” the crypto billionaire wrote on its Twitter account. “But in this particular case, we will compensate the affected users. This is a one-time thing and we will not do this going forward. This is not a precedent. We will not making a habit of compensating for users getting phished by fake versions of other companies! But this once, we'll do it; roughly $6m total.”

13) But in this particular case, we will compensate the affected users.

THIS IS A ONE-TIME THING AND WE WILL NOT DO THIS GOING FORWARD.

THIS IS NOT A PRECEDENT.

We will not making a habit of compensating for uses getting phished by fake versions of other companies!

— SBF (@SBF_FTX) October 23, 2022

The platform was recently hit by an exploit in which attackers used 3Commas’ APIs to make unauthorized trades on the exchange. “A few users accidentally registered at fake other sites, including 3 Commas,” explained Sam Bankman-Fried on his post. “They provided their FTX api keys to use the sites' trading tools.  Others users were probably phished through other methods.  But one way or another, these users were exploited by third party attackers. In general, there's very little we can do about this: other sites can fail to squash phishing attempts on them, and users can ask to let those sites control their FTX API keys,” he added, claiming that “is something we should be fighting as an industry. Right now each company has to separately deal with phishing and it sucks. FTX has, but others need to as well.”

Recently, Texas regulators targeted FTX and its founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried over potential securities violations, claiming it is currently offering unregistered securities in the form of yield-bearing account to customers in the United States.