FTX Customer Fights Six-Figure Fee After Stablecoin Ticker Confusion

A dispute between FTX and one of its users has emerged over roughly $954,135 in fees the exchange withheld from a deposit, after a stablecoin rebrand appears to have caused confusion between two unrelated tokens sharing the same ticker.

The trouble traces back to late August 2021, when Paxos rebranded its stablecoin PAX to the ticker USDP — a symbol already in use by Unit Protocol for its own stablecoin. FTX updated the coin label on its deposit page from PAX to USDP but did not notify users of the change. A customer who held USDP from Unit Protocol subsequently deposited approximately $6.3 million worth of tokens onto FTX, unaware that the exchange's "USDP" now referred to the Paxos asset rather than the Unit Protocol one.

Adding to the confusion, FTX's desktop platform and its iOS app displayed inconsistent labeling for the coin, and as of the time of this report (October 6, 2021), the mislabeling had still not been corrected.

Before publishing, this outlet confirmed the deposit on-chain, reached out to several FTX support staff via Telegram, and emailed [email protected] on September 29, 2021. None of these inquiries received a response.

The dispute, drawn from support ticket 84108, unfolded as follows:

The user first laid out how the mix-up occurred: no announcement had been sent about the ticker change; USDP had reasonably been assumed to refer to the established Unit Protocol coin; and, since experienced FTX users know all ERC-20 stablecoin deposits share the same address, the user had simply reused a previously saved Metamask address rather than copying a fresh one from FTX's interface — meaning the discrepancy went unnoticed.

FTX support responded that the asset in question was not supported on the platform, and that users bear responsibility for verifying support before sending funds. The exchange stated it would not typically compensate for this kind of deposit, but said that after internal review, it would credit the user at the USDC rate obtained via a Curve liquidity swap, minus a 15% fee — leaving a credit of 5,406,769.5815 USDP (described as USD Paxos / USDC), to be applied within 24 hours.

The user pushed back, noting that more than $1 million had been deducted from funds representing eight years of accumulated holdings, and argued the situation didn't match FTX's stated "Wrong Address or Chain" policy, since the deposit had not been made to a chain or address the user believed to be incorrect. The user requested an appeal, reiterating that: no notice of the coin's renaming had been given outside of promotional IEO emails; the only indication that USDP now meant Paxos would have appeared upon clicking through to generate a deposit address — a step skipped because the address was already saved; and FTX's iOS app was, at the time, still displaying the old "PAX" label even though the user had used the desktop site for the transaction.

FTX support replied that the decision was final, and reiterated that users should not deposit unsupported assets. Multiple follow-up messages sent after this reply, received September 20, 2021, went unanswered.

FTX's own published Wrong Address or Chain policy states that FTX bears no responsibility for withdrawals sent to an incorrect address and cannot recover them. For deposits sent to an incorrect FTX address, however, the policy says FTX can attempt recovery but will charge up to $500 or 5%. For deposits sent on the wrong chain, the policy likewise promises an attempted recovery with an automatic 5% fee on chains the exchange can support, while acknowledging that recovery may not be possible on others.

This isn't a story about the merits of decentralized exchanges over centralized ones — had this deposit gone to a DEX instead, the user might not have recovered any funds at all. The issue here is narrower: FTX's own stated fee ceiling for this type of error is 5%, yet the exchange charged three times that amount. On a deposit of this size, the gap between a documented 5% policy and an applied 15% fee is difficult to justify.

The core ask is straightforward — FTX should either honor the 5% fee outlined in its own terms and refund the difference, or publicly explain why it chose to deviate from its published policy in this case. So far, the user's follow-up attempts have gone unanswered, which raises a broader question about how a centralized exchange handles trust and accountability when something goes wrong on its end. That trust is arguably the main advantage a CEX offers over a decentralized alternative, and it's undermined when a company doesn't follow the rules it has written for itself.