FTX Restructuring Team Has Clawed Back $5B in Lost Assets

The FTX restructuring team has recovered more than $5 billion in cash, liquid cryptocurrency, and liquid investments in securities, FTX's lead attorney Adam Landis said on Wednesday morning at a court hearing in Delaware.

The assets recovered also include “dozens of illiquid cryptocurrency tokens,” and Landis noted that the “holdings are so large relative to the total supply that our positions cannot be sold without substantially affecting the market for the token.”

It's an eerily similar position to the one that Alameda Research, FTX's trading desk, found itself in when it held billions worth of FTX's exchange token FTT on its books against billions in liabilities. That revelation, in early November, was the first domino to fall for the company. The resulting rush of withdrawals forced FTX to shut down its exchange and file for bankruptcy on November 11. At the same time, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO.

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Landis said on Wednesday that FTX has also identified more than 9 million customer accounts linked to roughly $120 billion associated transactions. He said the team is currently undergoing a process to determine the value of positions on November 11 "for every customer."

At the start of the hearing, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey briefly mentioned a letter he received from four U.S. senators, calling it “an inappropriate ex parte communication.” It’s unclear whether the judge named the senators in court as audio quality of the hearings’ live stream was poor and unclear on Wednesday morning.

As the bankruptcy process continues, FTX's legal team will continue to try to claw back funds for eventual disbursement to customers. Things got off to a murky start in November, with newly appointed FTX CEO John J. Ray III, who also served as the trustee in the Enron bankruptcy, saying that the company doesn't know how much money it has. Then in December, the company estimated it could recover $1 billion worth of the company's assets. The grand total owed is still unclear, and estimates have been as high as $10 billion.