Canadian Crypto Exchange ezBtc Accused of Gambling Away $9.5M in User Funds
Ruholamin Haqshanas is a contributing crypto writer for CryptoNews. He is a crypto and finance journalist with over four years of experience. Ruholamin has been featured in several high-profile crypto...
The Canadian cryptocurrency trading platform ezBtc and its founder, David Smillie, are accused of gambling away approximately 13 million Canadian dollars ($9.5 million) of user funds.
A panel from the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC), a provincial regulator, has found that ezBtc diverted customer investments for personal use, including gambling.
Operating between 2016 and 2019, ezBtc attracted significant investments, amassing over 2,300 Bitcoin and more than 600 Ether from its users.
The platform claimed that all user funds were securely stored in cold storage.
However, in September 2019, ezBtc went offline permanently, and by 2022, it had been officially dissolved.
The BCSC panel’s investigation revealed that Smillie had siphoned off nearly one-third of user funds for gambling and personal expenses.
Specifically, 935.46 Bitcoin and 159 Ether were transferred from ezBtc to Smillie’s exchange accounts or directly to online gambling platforms such as CloudBet and FortuneJack.
The panel highlighted that these transfers were sometimes made directly from ezBtc accounts and, in other cases, were routed through Smillie’s personal exchange accounts.
“The transfers to the two gambling websites were sometimes direct from ezBtc, and sometimes indirect from ezBtc to Smillie’s exchange accounts and then to the gambling websites,” they wrote.
【Canadian crypto exchange gambled away $9.5M of users’ Bitcoin and Ether】
The Canadian cryptocurrency trading platform ezBtc and its founder, David Smillie, defrauded customers by
