Business

$5B in FTX Assets Recovered

DELAWARE, USA – United States bankruptcy proceedings for fallen crypto company FTX continuing in Delaware, Wednesday.

Published

2 years ago

January 11, 2023

Berthony McDermott

DELAWARE, USA – United States bankruptcy proceedings for fallen crypto company FTX continuing in Delaware, Wednesday.

Those proceedings revealing that $5 billion in liquid assets were recovered and around $170m in assets were seized in The Bahamas.

FTX has recovered more than $5 billion in liquid assets but the company’s attorney, Andy Dietderich, is telling a U.S. bankruptcy judge the extent of customer losses in the company’s collapse is still unknown.

But Dietderich told the court the $5 billion recovered does not include assets seized by the Securities Commission of The Bahamas, where the company was headquartered and where founder Sam Bankman-Fried lived.

FTX’s attorney estimated the seized assets were worth as little as $170 million, while Bahamian authorities put the figure as high as $3.5 billion.

He also told the court the company plans to sell non-strategic investments that had a book value of $4.6 billion.

The U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission has estimated missing customer funds at more than $8 billion.

He said the seized assets are largely comprised of FTX’s proprietary and illiquid FTT token, which is highly volatile in price.

The company, which was valued at $32 billion just a year ago, filed for bankruptcy protection in November as U.S. prosecutors accuse founder Bankman-Fried of orchestrating an “epic” fraud costing investors, customers and lenders billions of dollars.

In addition, some of equity investors were disclosed in a Monday court filing, including American football star Tom Brady, Brady’s former wife supermodel Gisele Bündchen and New England Patriots Owner Robert Kraft.

Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty in Manhattan Federal Court last month, after he was indicted for allegedly stealing customer deposits to pay debts from his hedge fund, Alameda Research, and lied to equity investors about the now failed crypto exchange’s financial condition.