Multichain Ceases Operations After CEO’s Sister Was Detained in China
- The team behind Multichain confirmed that their CEO was detained in China on 21 May, and that all of his electronic devices were confiscated by the local police.
- The CEO’s sister moved the project’s remaining funds to wallets under her control on 9 July, and several days later was also detained by the police, leaving the team with no funds.
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Cross-chain protocol Multichain will be ceasing operations due to lack of funds, caused by the arrest of its CEO Zhaojun and his sister by Chinese police, the platform said via Twitter on 14 July.
According to the announcement, the team behind the project was forced to shut down the project “due to lack of alternative sources of information and corresponding operational funds”. The international team also confirmed the rumors that its CEO Zhaojun was detained by Chinese police, and explained that it had no contact with the executive since then. The project tweeted:
The team was able to contact Zhaojun’s family shortly after his disappearance, and earned that all of Zhaojin’s computers, phones, hardware wallets, and mnemonic phrases were confiscated by the Chinese police on 21 May. Although the project was protected by multi-party computation, the servers that were running this were all controlled by the CEO’s personal cloud server, and after his arrest the team had their access revoked. All of Multichain’s operational funds and investor funds were also under Zhaojun’s control, and were now with the Chinese police.
Zhaojun’s family was able to log into the cloud server platform on 4 June — using historical information on his home computer — but only gave the Multichain engineers limited access as to fix issues with Router2 and Router 5.
On 7 July there was an abnormal movement of funds from the network, with Zhaojun’s sister claiming that the cloud server platform showed a login from an IP address in Kunming, China. Two days later, the sister transferred the remaining user assets into new wallets under her control as a “preservation action”, but on 13 July she was also taken into custody by the Chinese police, and now the “status of the assets she has preserved is uncertain”.
- The head of China’s central bank digital currency institute said the e-CNY has undergone a major upgrade, and should be made available as an option in all retail scenarios.
- The PBOC official noted that platforms can integrate the CBDC in the short term using QR codes, and focus on upgrading their payment tools in the long run.
Office building of the People’s Bank of China. Flickr
- Scheduled for 7 July, the suspension will impact AVA, SPELL, BIFI, ALPACA, POLS, ACH, SUPER, and FARM on the BNB Smart Chain, Fantom, Avalanche, and Ethereum networks.
- Binance clarified that trading of these tokens will not be impacted, and that users will still be able to deposit and withdraw them through alternative networks that do not involve the Multichain project.
- The crypto exchange warned its users in an email that starting 10 May it will no longer issue new loans through its Coinbase Borrow program.
- The service has been operating since November 2021, and allowed customers to use their Bitcoin as collateral to borrow up to $1 million in fiat from Coinbase.