In remarks made Monday at the B20 Summit in Indonesia, CZ said he wanted the industry, as well as regulators, to take responsibility for cleaning up its act. 
“We will try to collect the other industry players together to form an industry association globally, and try to deal with some of the common standards in business.” CZ said, citing recent crypto market events as a reason for the initiative to happen “very soon.”

Kraken Freezes FTX and Alameda Accounts, ‘Maintains Full Reserves’

According to a tweet by Kraken, the crypto exchange has frozen the accounts owned by and associated with “FTX Group, Alameda Research, and their executives.” 

The tweet stated, 

“Kraken has spoken with law enforcement regarding a handful of accounts owned by the bankrupt FTX Group, Alameda Research and their executives. Those accounts have been frozen to protect their creditors. Other Kraken clients are not affected. Kraken maintains full reserves.” 

FTX had previously approached Kraken – which claimed no exposure to Alameda Research but held almost 9,000 FTT tokens – about a potential rescue deal.

Crypto Exchange AAX Halts Withdrawals, Says FTX Put ‘Immense Pressure’ On Industry

Hong Kong-based crypto exchange AAX has suspended withdrawals, citing a glitch in a system upgrade. The exchange stated that a failure caused by a third-party partner led to some user balances being “abnormally recorded” in the system. 

It stated that it will do its best to “resume regular operations for all users within 7-10 days.” It denied rumors of the withdrawal pause being due to the fallout of FTX. 

In a statement to Bloomberg, AAX vice president Ben Caselin stated, 

“The FTX situation has put immense pressure on exchanges everywhere with users nervous about exchange holdings. It’s my observation this can be resolved in a few days, although rebuilding market confidence may take months. [AAX] funds are intact.” 

AAX reportedly has over 2 million users in 100 countries, and claims that it’s suffered “multiple malicious attacks,” which is why it’s limiting services like withdrawals, because “the technical team has had to manually proofread and restore the system to ensure maximum accuracy of all users’ holdings.” 

The company has, however, created a Google form where users can request withdrawals manually. But this seems like a shockingly bad idea, if only because literally anyone with a Google account can make a Google form and try to spoof AAX’s own form. 

AAX says it has set up a “dedicated task force” to provide updates every day at 12:00pm local time in Hong Kong, which is 11:00am the previous day on the east coast of the US right now. 

AAX ends its press release by noting that AAX would never ask for your password, two-factor authentication codes, or any other sensitive information – but acknowledges that the Google form where it’s processing manual withdrawals definitely asks for a copy of your ID. 

The crypto market was recovering slightly Monday morning after a weekend slide that saw bitcoin dip below $16,000, a two year low. Bitcoin is currently trading at $16,450, up slightly from 24 hours prior, and Ethereum is trading at $1,255, up 2.38% from the day earlier.