Lawyers handling the bankruptcy of FTX, the cryptocurrency giant co-founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, said on Wednesday they recovered $5 billion (around Rs. 40,780 billion) in assets to move funds from the failed firm rescue.
FTXonce the most famous crypto exchange in the world, it collapsed spectacularly in November, abandoning nine million customers and seeing co-founders Bankmann-Fried charged by US prosecutors with fraud.
The fall of FTX and Bankman-Fried’s arrest and extradition from the Bahamas sent a shockwave through the crypto industry after a decade of extraordinary growth on the back of Bitcoin and other digital currencies.
“We found over $5 billion in cash, liquid cryptocurrency and securities for liquid investments,” FTX attorney Andrew Dietderich said in a Delaware bankruptcy court.
He also said the company has plans to sell other investments with a book value of $4.6 billion (approx.
The attorney said it was too early to say how much would be required to compensate customers whose deposits disappeared overnight.
“We know this has all resulted in a loss of value to repay customers and creditors. The amount of the shortfall has not yet been determined,” Dietderich told the court.
FTX and its sister trading house Alameda Research went bankrupt in November, winding up a virtual trading business which at one point was valued by the market at US$32 billion (about Rs.2.60.94 billion).
The US has charged Bankman-Fried with conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and election finance violations.
FTX’s attorney told the court the 30-year-old defrauded investors by creating a back-channel that drained customer deposits at FTX to Alameda and a secret $65 billion line of credit.
Bankman-Fried is out on bail and living at his parents’ home in California after pleading not guilty in federal court in Manhattan on Jan. 3.
