Four days ago, the crypto rewards platform Freeway.io, formally called Aubit, halted withdrawals on October 23 after citing it was protecting the firm’s portfolio from “market fluctuations and volatility.” Two days later, the team updated the community and explained on Tuesday that “one of Freeway’s trading strategies appears to have failed and caused a substantial loss.”
Crypto Rewards Company Freeway Updates Crypto Community After Halting Supercharger Buy-Backs
The crypto rewards company Freeway.io was a platform that claimed to offer up to 40% annual percentage yield (APY) on “Supercharger” accounts. However, on October 22, the whistleblower known as “Fatman” published a tweet that warned people to get their funds off the Freeway platform.
“I believe they are operating a Ponzi scheme,” Fatman told his 103,000 Twitter followers. “In my opinion, it’s likely that Freeway will collapse within the next few months and that all depositors will lose everything.”
The following day, Freeway published an update that said it had to reallocate funds in order to protect the rewards company’s portfolio from “market fluctuations and volatility.” Amid the reallocation process, it said that operations would be halted and it could not comment further on the situation.
The news was followed with intense speculation and claims that some of the company’s employees were erased from the firm’s web portal. An internet archive of the company’s website confirms that specific employee names were deleted from the site at some point during the end of September. On October 25, Freeway’s Twitter account gave the public an update on where the company stands.
The language used is ambiguous and the team’s Twitter thread says: “The following is our understanding: One of Freeway’s trading strategies appears to have failed and caused a substantial loss to be incurred due to unexpected market volatility.” Freeway claims that it observed two “converging factors” that led to the incident — “the unprecedented USD rally and crypto volatility.”
Interestingly, the U.S. dollar rally has been known for quite some time and the so-called “unprecedented” rise has been well documented by the financial media. The U.S. dollar has been on the rise for well over six months and crypto volatility has been super minimal in recent times compared to most global assets.
Freeway further said that the “trade execution carried out by the Ardu Prime Brokerage had nothing to do with this failure.” The company insists that the “trading strategy was executed as it was programmed, but the market volatility caused a spike in margin utilisation leading to the loss.”
The crypto rewards company Freeway added:
Unfortunately, the trading loss that has been incurred has dramatically impacted Freeway’s portfolio, but, having been made aware of these losses we are taking steps to secure Freeway’s remaining funds, and have already moved out of the loss-producing strategy.
Supercharger Buy-Backs Won’t Resume Until the Firm Is ‘in a Position to Execute Safely,’ Freeway Has No Idea About the Length of Time It Will Take to Resume Operations
Freeway also detailed that four different recovery plans were in motion and one of them plans to allocate “funding in a totally new product with impressive projected profitability.” The company closed the Twitter thread by saying that the recovery plans will take time and the plans need to be executed before it resumes Supercharger operations again.
“In order for us to resume Supercharger buy-backs we need to be in a position to execute safely,” Freeway said. “We will therefore need to see significant inroads into the losses before that can happen, and that will take time.” Freeway’s Twitter thread is locked and only people Freeway mentions (@) can reply to the company’s update.
The Freeway team’s Twitter thread concludes:
We know your next question is going to be about the length of time involved. We do not have an immediate answer for this.
Freeway’s native crypto asset called freeway (FWT) is down close to 80% against the U.S. dollar during the last seven days. During the last 24 hours, however, FWT has seen some gains and managed to climb from $0.00114042 per unit to $0.00147076 per FWT.
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What do you think about Freeway’s latest update saying that it suffered from a “substantial loss” stemming from a trading strategy? What do you think about the firm saying it does not have an “immediate answer” for when operations will resume? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
Jamie Redman is the News Lead at Bitcoin.com News and a financial tech journalist living in Florida. Redman has been an active member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. He has a passion for Bitcoin, open-source code, and decentralized applications. Since September 2015, Redman has written more than 6,000 articles for Bitcoin.com News about the disruptive protocols emerging today.
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