Prime Trust subsidiary Banq files for bankruptcy protection

Banq, a payments subsidiary of troubled crypto custodian Prime Trust, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States District Court of Nevada.

According to the bankruptcy filing, Banq has total assets worth around $17 million and total liabilities of around $5 million. The filing comes less than a week after Prime Trust, Banq’s parent company, reached a preliminary acquisition deal with rival BitGo, pending approvals.

Banq, powered by Prime Trust 

Founded in 2020, Banq provided “mobile SDKs [software development kits] on top of Prime Trust APIs for easy integration of all the crypto and fiat funding services,” according to its website. Banq or Prime Trust reportedly provided services to Haru Invest, which abruptly suspended deposit and withdrawal requests yesterday until further notice.

“Recently, we have come across a certain issue with one of the service partners we have worked with,” the South Korea-founded and Singapore-based crypto investment platform said, adding: “We are now further investigating the issue with them and seeking the contingency plan to rectify the situation.”

Haru Invest offered yields as high as 50% on crypto and claimed to manage assets under $1 billion for over 80,000 members globally, according to details on its website.

Prime Trust’s issues have also affected TrueUSD, the issuer of the TUSD stablecoin. “TUSD mints via Prime Trust are paused for further notification,” TrueUSD said on the weekend. “We, the TUSD team, are diligently working towards resuming TUSD minting on Prime Trust,” it added earlier this week.

This article has been updated with additional information.