FTX’s bankruptcy estate announced Tuesday that creditors and customers are likely to receive between $14.5 billion to $16.3 billion in total compensation—but that doesn’t include payouts for holders of FTX’s ill-fated FTT token.
Once regarded as the defunct exchange’s native token on Ethereum, allowed claims regarding FTT are to be “canceled or released,” a plan filed in Delaware bankruptcy court states. Conversely, those with NFTs currently trapped in the FTX NFT platform due to the company’s collapse are set to receive the assets back.
Around 98% of FTX creditors with allowed claims less than $50,000 will also receive 118% of what they're owed if the plan receives court approval. Based on the USD value of crypto prices when FTX buckled in 2022, the payment represents a little interest on top of funds customers lost 18 months ago, when crypto prices were broadly much lower than they are now.
Creditors and customers who lost FTT in FTX’s collapse were previously set to receive cash payments based on their holdings, according to an FTX reorganization plan filed last December. The plan also stipulates that NFT-related claims would see their corresponding JPEGs returned.
Tom Brady Ridiculed for FTX and Crypto Investments in Netflix Roast
Star NFL quarterback Tom Brady took a lot of flak for his crypto investments during a 3-hour live Netflix comedy roast on Sunday. "The Roast of Tom Brady," which was recorded and is still available to watch on the streaming platform, featured a number of pointed jokes about Brady's affinity for Bitcoin and his ties to bankrupt crypto exchange FTX. And it didn't take long for the crypto jokes to show up, either. Within the first five minutes of the comedy special, host and comedian Kevin Hart add...
FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was handed a 25-year prison sentence in March for stealing $8 billion from customers, among other misdeeds. The disgraced crypto wunderkind secretly siphoned billions of dollars from the exchange to purchase Bahamian real estate, bankroll venture investments, and amass influence through political donations.
Most of Bankman-Fried’s wealth, which topped out at an estimated $26.5 billion, was made up of ownership in FTX and FTT, per Bankman-Fried’s profile on Forbes.
Among the NFTs impacted by FTX’s collapse are Solana NFTs minted by the platform itself, including those offered by concert festivals Coachella and Tomorrowland, NBA star Steph Curry’s 2974 NFT collection, and Formula One-themed NFTs from the Mercedes-AMG Petronas racing team.
Bulletproof Cadillac, Butler, and $1.5M Titanic Watch: FTX Exec's Lavish Spending Continues
As Sam Bankman-Fried stares down the barrel of a 25 year prison sentence, most of his former FTX colleagues have done their best to stay out of the limelight. But one former executive of the collapsed crypto exchange is now raising eyebrows for his extravagant purchases. Patrick Gruhn, the former head of FTX Europe, recently spent $1.5 million to acquire a gold watch found on the corpse of a victim of the Titanic, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. The watch originally belonged t...
FTT’s collapse is synonymous with the fatal tailspin that wrecked FTX in November 2022. A report from CoinDesk revealed that Alameda Research, a trading firm owned by Bankman-Fried, held $4 billion worth of FTT on its balance sheet at the time.
After Changpeng Zhao, founder and then-CEO of Binance, moved to sell the exchange’s FTT holdings, the token nosedived, sparking a flood of investors withdrawing cash from FTX. Failing to process withdrawals, that eventually forced FTX to admit it didn’t hold 1:1 reserves of customer assets.
The day FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, FTT traded hands at $2.62, down 97% from its 2021 all-time high of $80.50. Jumping occasionally since then on bankruptcy-related remarks, FTT is currently worth $2.14, according to CoinGecko.
Aside from being used to inflate the balance sheets of Bankman-Fried’s business empire, the one-time crypto mogul leveraged FTT in some business dealings. That includes a $30 million payment made almost entirely of FTT to the former NFL star Tom Brady and his ex-wife, supermodel Gisele Bündchen, for appearing in several FTX commercials.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
