Bahamas Securities Commission Confirms It Has $3.5B in FTX Assets

By Will McCurdy

The Securities Commission of The Bahamas has confirmed it still holds $3.5 billion worth of FTX’s assets, which it took possession of in early November, soon after the failed crypto exchange filed for bankruptcy. 

The commission said assets will remain stored in its digital wallets until the Bahamas Supreme Court directs them to distribute these to the defunct exchange's customers and creditors or they receive clarity about how the firm’s insolvency is to be handled. 

The above figures are based on market prices at the time of the transfer, November 12. These figures have changed significantly since then.

In addition, the Commission confirmed that it determined last month that the “imminent dissipation” of the digital assets was a “significant risk” due to reports which had been circulating about a cyber attack on FTX around the time. These reports indicated that FTX employees could not access the company’s Amazon Web Services system.

FTX was hit by an attack of unknown origin—which nabbed cryptocurrency worth an estimated $650 million—shortly after the firm’s financial troubles emerged and it filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. 

The role of Bahamian regulators in the FTX scandal has not been without criticism.

In a Delaware court earlier this month, a group of lawyers representing FTX petitioned Judge John Dorsey to deny a request from Bahamian regulators to be granted access to the U.S. division's cloud-based systems, which could include data from its Google, Slack, and Amazon Web Services accounts. 

In a court filing, the lawyers said this request for access “is not warranted and presents massive and unjustifiable security risks to the Debtors, their assets, their customers and creditors,” adding that the Bahmanian government failed “to identify any basis that would justify their request for expedition.”

FTX’s lawyers also alleged they “have received nothing other than a stone wall; a complete refusal to provide any information whatsoever, including an accounting of diverted assets” so far in their conversations with the island states’ regulatory bodies.

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