Daily Management Review

New Filing Reveals Collapsed Cryptocurrency Exchange FTX Owes More Than $3 Billion To Its 50 Largest Creditors


11/22/2022




New Filing Reveals Collapsed Cryptocurrency Exchange FTX Owes More Than $3 Billion To Its 50 Largest Creditors
According to a new filing over the weekend, the embattled cryptocurrency exchange FTX owes its creditors more than $3 billion.
 
The largest of FTX's top 50 unsecured creditors is owed more than $226 million, according to a list that excludes their names and other identifiable information. The second-largest unsecured creditor is suing FTX for over $203 million in unpaid debts.
 
The total amount of unsecured claims (those that were not secured by collateral) is $3.1 billion. According to an earlier bankruptcy filing, FTX may have more than one million creditors.
 
Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX's disgraced founder, stepped down as CEO earlier this month, as the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
 
FTX, which was once valued at $32 billion, collapsed in a matter of days after the CEO of a rival firm, Binance, announced that his exchange would liquidate its FTT tokens. As a result, FTT, FTX's native token, plummeted, causing a liquidity crisis at FTX.
 
According to reports, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice are looking into what happened.
 
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies fell in value on Monday. Since Zhao's Nov. 6 tweet, the crypto market has lost more than $260 billion in value.
 
Bankman-Fried has been accused of flagrant mismanagement and fraud by his peers in the cryptocurrency industry.
 
According to previous reporting, his exchange allegedly used customer funds to make risky trades.
 
In an appalling account of FTX's downfall last week, the company's new CEO, John Ray III, stated in a regulatory filing that many of the FTX group companies "lacked appropriate corporate governance."
 
FTX said on Thursday that it has credible evidence that the exchange transferred assets to the custody of the Bahamas government.
 
The company's new CEO is now looking to sell or restructure the company's global empire.
 
There were no comments on the issue from either FTX or Bankman-Fried.
 
This year has seen a number of high-profile failures that have caused ripple effects among cryptocurrency investors.
 
The collapse of so-called stablecoin terraUSD earlier this year had repercussions on a number of companies and contributed to the demise of major hedge fund Three Arrows Capital.
 
The latest market collapse has raised concerns about the opacity of large businesses in crypto, an industry that is often touted as more decentralized and transparent than traditional finance.
 
The FTX debacle, according to Bank of England Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe, has increased the pressure on regulators to act on cryptocurrency.
 
“We should not wait until it is large and connected to develop the regulatory frameworks necessary to prevent a crypto shock that could have a much greater destabilizing impact,” Cunliffe said in a speech Monday at Warwick Business School.
 
(Source:www.business-standard.com)