Hard to believe but evidently true. Collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX has located more than $5 billion of assets. “We have located over 5 billion dollars of cash, liquid cryptocurrency and liquid investment securities,” Andy Dietderich, an attorney for FTX, told US Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey in Delaware. However, a US bankruptcy court was told on Wednesday that the extent of customer losses is still unknown.
Dietderich said that the recovered funds do not include assets seized by the Securities Commission of the Bahamas, where FTX was based and where Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was living at the time of his arrest. U.S. Prosecutors have accused SBF of orchestrating an “epic” fraud that may have cost investors, customers, and lenders billions of dollars. He has pleaded not guilty to charges that he cheated investors.
The $5 billion figure doesn’t include any illiquid cryptocurrency assets, FTX attorney Adam Landis told the court. He said the company’s holdings are so large that selling them would substantially affect the market, driving down their value.
FTX’s new CEO, John J. Ray, previously attested that at least $8 billion of customer assets were unaccounted for in the “worst” case of corporate control he’d ever seen. The FTX case is likely to remain exciting for some time. Billions disappear and suddenly reappear.
