Crypto IRA Sues Gemini Exchange Over $36M Theft Of BTC, ETH

Crypto IRA sues the Gemini crypto exchange over $36 million theft of BTC and ETH, with the trust saying the exchange is to blame for the February hack, while Gemini denies the allegations so let’s read more today in our latest cryptocurrency news.

IRA Financial Trust lost $36 million in crypto in a February hack and now, Crypto IRA sues the New York-based exchange Gemini to hold its digital assets. It alleged that Gemini didn’t have proper safeguards in place to protect the customer crypto assets and wanted to sue the platform. IRA Financial Trust is a company that manages individual retirement accounts in non-traditional assets like BTC which announced a lawsuit against Gemini today.

IRA Financial was hacked for $36 million worth of crypto and the criminals stole $21 million in BTC as well as $15 million in ETH from retirement accounts. IRA used Gemini’s platform to hold crypto and alleges that the New York-based exchange’s systems are to blame because it failed to freeze accounts in a fast manner after the incident. The announcement read:

“As stated in the complaint, the lawsuit, IRA Financial Trust v. Gemini Trust Company, LLC, alleges that the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange platform did not have proper safeguards in place to protect customer crypto assets.”

It added:

“IRA Financial Trust has been working to find a resolution for its impacted customers since this incident occurred and is pledging to use the proceeds from the lawsuit to reimburse IRA Financial customers impacted by the February 8, 2022, incident.”

Gemini responded to the allegations in the statement and said:

 “We reject the allegations in the lawsuit. Our security standards are among the highest in the industry and we are constantly updating them to ensure our customers are always protected. In this matter, as soon as IRA Financial notified us of their security incident, we acted quickly to mitigate the loss of funds from their accounts.”

Miami-based IRA Financial manages the individual retirement accounts and tax-advantaged savings instruments for US workers that can deduct the contributions from the income. Gemini is a popular exchange run by billionaire brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss with the two being famous in the crypto space because of the early BTC investmetns that made them a fortune. Gemini however had a string of bad luck recently. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a complaint against the exchange and alleged that it mislead regulators by making material or false statements in an effort to gain approval for the BTC futures product.

The exchange also announced that it will be laying off 10% of its staff in an effort to surpass the “crypto winter.”