Founder of bankrupt crypto exchange FTX denies he has fled to South America

The erstwhile main enforcement of 1 of the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchanges has denied helium fled to South America aft steadfast filed for bankruptcy.

FTX laminitis Sam Bankman-Fried was asked by Reuters astir Twitter speculation helium had flown to Argentina and responded successful a substance message: "Nope."

The 30-year-old, who has been removed arsenic main executive, told Reuters helium was successful the Bahamas, wherever helium lives.

Meanwhile the crypto speech has go mired successful further contention aft it said it had detected unauthorised transactions and analysts flagged that millions of dollars of assets had been moved from the level successful "suspicious circumstances".

FTX filed for bankruptcy connected Friday aft its bigger rival Binance walked distant from a projected acquisition.

At slightest $1bn (£845m) worthy of lawsuit funds person vanished from the platform, Reuters reported, quoting sources.

The quality bureau said Mr Bankman-Fried had transferred $10bn (£8.4bn) of lawsuit funds to his trading company, Alameda Research.

Further problems emerged erstwhile FTX's US wide counsel Ryne Miller tweeted to accidental the firm's integer assets were being moved into alleged acold retention "to mitigate harm upon observing unauthorised transactions".

Cold retention refers to crypto wallets which are not connected to the net to defender against hackers.

Earlier Mr Miller tweeted to accidental helium was "investigating abnormalities with wallet movements related to consolidation of FTX balances crossed exchanges."

Blockchain analytics steadfast Nansen said it saw $659m (£557m) successful outflows from FTX International and FTX US successful the past 24 hours.

A abstracted analytics firm, Elliptic, said astir $473m (£400m) worthy of cryptoassets were "moved retired of FTX wallets successful suspicious circumstances aboriginal this morning", but it could not corroborate the tokens had been stolen.

The situation surrounding the speech has raised further questions astir the regularisation of cryptocurrencies and different integer assets.

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