THORSwap, Used by FTX Exploiter, Resumes Trading After Updating Terms to Exclude U.S.-Sanctioned Countries

THORSwap, the exchange that shut down its platform last Friday after a series of trades linked to the FTX hack, resumed its services on Friday after updating its terms and conditions to exclude North Korea and other countries under US financial sanctions and Europe fall.

The platform’s native token (THOR) has risen 10% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.

The updated one conditions restrict users from accessing the exchange if they are located in countries sanctioned by the US, UK or European Union. Countries specifically mentioned include Myanmar, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Syria and Zimbabwe.

“THORSwap is back online!” the company wrote in one message on X (formerly Twitter). “Aside from the shiny new terms of service, users won’t notice any of it. Behind the scenes, we’ve been working with an industry leader to put some additional guardrails in place to help prevent the flow of illicit funds.”

The THORSwap protocol runs on top of THORChain, a network that allows users to freely trade tokens between different blockchains. It had halted operations a week ago — switching to “maintenance mode” — after “consultations with consultants, legal counsel and law enforcement,” as the team put it.

That announcement came after a crypto wallet labeled ‘FTX Exploiter’ suddenly began moving funds to various addresses and protocols in recent weeks – including THORSwap; the money had been in the wallet for months.

The FTX Exploiter wallet contained some of the $600 million extracted by hackers from wallets linked to Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange, amid the chaos that followed the company’s messy bankruptcy filing in late 2022 .

Read more: FTX ‘Hacker’ moved 15K ETH this weekend