The Open Exchange, or OPNX, is closing down this month, according to an email sent to users.
“We would like to inform you that OPNX.com will officially cease operations and shut down in February 2024.”
Customers were advised to settle their positions by Feb. 7 and withdraw their money by Feb. 14.
OPNX was created by 3AC’s Kyle Davies and Su Zhu and launched in April 2023 for the trading of bankruptcy claims. Davies and Zhu’s previous firm, Singapore-based Three Arrows Capital, collapsed in 2022 and was part of that year’s crypto meltdowns.
The pair disappeared after their crypto hedge fund collapsed and Singapore’s central bank issued nine-year prohibition orders to them over securities law violations in September 2023. Su Zhu was apprehended at Changi Airport in Singapore in September, according to the company’s liquidator, Teneo.
In May, the pair were reprimanded and fined by Dubai’s crypto regulator for operating OPNX as an unregulated exchange.
Teneo is currently seeking to recover $1.3 billion directly from the founders, claiming that they leveraged investors’ funds before the firm went bankrupt.
In related news, the bankrupt crypto lender Genesis has settled the Security and Exchange Commission’s Earn Lawsuit. The subsidiary of Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group agreed to pay a $21 million civil penalty to the SEC, according to Bloomberg.
However, it will only have to pay the penalty if the company can fully repay its customers and other creditors in its bankruptcy proceedings.
Open Exchange Token, OX, dumped nearly 40% as the news broke late on Feb 1. The exchange token has recovered slightly to trade at $0.0085 at the time of writing.
However, the native asset of the soon-to-be-defunct crypto exchange is down 89.5% from its all-time high of $0.0813 in August 2023.
The OPNX founding team also includes Mark Lamb, the former CEO of collapsed crypto derivatives exchange CoinFlex.
The FLEX token, which is the CoinFlex native asset, also tanked on the news. FLEX fell 16% to $0.327 at the time and is currently down 97% from its August all-time high.