Voyager Digital Holdings has reportedly reached an agreement with the U.S. federal government to proceed with a $1 billion plan to sell its assets to the American arm of the crypto exchange Binance.
The news was shared by the Voyager Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors (UCC) on Wednesday.
“Voyager, the UCC, and the Government reached a resolution that will allow the Plan to move forward and go effective shortly,” the UCC said in a Twitter thread.
According to the Committee, “the resolution is embodied in a joint stipulation providing that the appeals will continue with respect to the Plan’s exculpation provision,” with the government agreeing that the Binance.US acquisition of Voyager’s assets “may move forward without such provision and will not otherwise be subject to the stay.”
2/ The resolution is embodied in a joint stipulation providing that the appeals will continue with respect to the Plan’s exculpation provision. The Government has agreed that the Plan may move forward without such provision and will not otherwise be subject to the stay.
— Voyager Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors (@VoyagerUCC) April 19, 2023
The Committee added that together with Voyager it is seeking to help Binance.US “to move forward as quickly as possible once this stipulation is approved by the District Court.”
Decrypt has reached out to Binance.US for comments and will update this article should we hear back.
Voyager’s arduous path to reimbursing investors
The approval comes three weeks after the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York temporarily halted a previously reached agreement that would see Binance.US pay $20 million in cash to Voyager, and take on crypto assets deposited by the firm's customers.
Voyager filed for bankruptcy last July after disclosing significant exposure to the failed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and has been actively working on a plan to redistribute funds to its investors since then.
The firm reached an agreement with FTX for the exchange to purchase its distressed assets in September 2022, however, the deal was taken off the table after FTX declared bankruptcy on its own, and its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was charged with multiple financial crimes.
In December 2022, after the purported deal with FTX fell through, Voyager revealed that Binance.US had made the highest and best offer for its distressed assets, with the approximate value of the deal of $1.022 billion.
A February court filing showed that 97% of the 61,300 account holders of Voyager supported the agreement with Binance.US, yet regulators including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have raised concerns about the deal.
The SEC has launched an investigation into whether Voyager violated federal securities laws and failed to adequately explain how it will safeguard customer assets after the transfer to Binance.US. The FTC has meanwhile alleged that the deal would unlawfully shield Voyager from accountability for "actual fraud, willful misconduct, or gross negligence."
In a separate filing, the New York Department of Financial Services (NYFDS) said Voyager onboarded customers in the state of New York and “thus illegally operated a virtual currency business in the state without a license.”
Aside from the above, Binance.US itself is facing regulatory hurdles that could possibly impact the exchange's ability to finalize the deal.