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 Gets Freeway Updating Crypto Community Following Halting Supercharger Purchase-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 toldHis 103,000 followers on Twitter. “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.
There was intense speculation about the news. 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. Over six months, the U.S.dollar has been increasing and crypto volatility in comparison to other global assets has been very low.
Continue reading 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.”
Freeway, a crypto-rewards company 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 sayingIt is expected that recovery plans may take some time. The plans must be completed before Supercharger operations can be resumed 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:
Your next question will be about how long it took. This is a question we don’t have an answer to right now.
Freeway’s native crypto asset called freeway (FWT) is down close to 80% against the U.S. dollar during the last seven days. FWT gained some strength over the last 24 hour and rose to $0.00114042 per unit.
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? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section.
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