The Securities Commission of the Bahamas, where FTX is headquartered, has approved the liquidation of FTX's assets, according to a press release issued this morning.
Last Thursday, the regulator issued an order to freeze the crypto firm’s assets. The Bahamian regulator suspended the exchange’s operation registration and asked the Supreme Court for a provisional liquidator to be appointed.
Kevin Cambridge and Peter Greaves of Big Four accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) have now been approved by the court as joint provisional liquidators. The Commission has also applied to the country's Supreme Court to appoint Brian Simms as the court-supervised provisional liquidator.
A provisional liquidator does not distribute assets to creditors but instead is put in place to preserve the firm's assets prior to a court hearing into a firm's bankruptcy filing.
The Commission will be liaising with "other super supervisory authorities" to get to the bottom of the FTX's historic collapse.
"Given the magnitude, urgency, and international implications of the unfolding events with regard to FTX, the Commission recognized that it had to, and moved swiftly to use its regulatory powers under the Digital Assets and Registered Exchanges Act, 2020 (“DARE Act”) to further protect the interests of clients, creditors, and other stakeholders globally of FTX Digital Markets Ltd," the Commission wrote.
What happened to FTX?
At its height back in March, Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto empire was worth an eye-watering $26 billion.
However, it all imploded last week when Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced he would be liquidating the exchange’s considerable holdings of FTX’s native token, FTT.
In a highly dramatic week, a whopping $6 billion exited FTX in 72 hours as customers rushed to pull their funds off the platform.
Binance offered to bail out FTX on Tuesday, but u-turned 24 hours later, citing the “latest news reports regarding mishandled customer funds and alleged U.0.S agency investigations.”