The crypto exchange FTX was the latest of the big crypto bankruptcies in 2022 but certainly the most prominent one. In the last few weeks, the U.S. DoJ, CFTC, and SEC regulators filed criminal charges and fraud complaints against the FTX top executives around Sam Bankman-Fried, Nishad Singh, and Gary Wang. A recent report from the Wall Street Journal pointed out that $8.9 billion worth of customer funds have been unaccounted for and therefore missing.
In the FTX bankruptcy procedures, around $2.7 billion in customer assets have been found, relative to $11.6 billion of the balance outstanding on customer accounts. The estimated value of FTX’s assets and liabilities is based on asset prices in November 2022, when the firm filed for bankruptcy.
Bankman-Fried’s other company, Alameda Research, had borrowed around $9.3 billion from customer accounts before bankruptcy. Thus, the current $8.9 billion hole can be attributed to Alameda. Prosecutors and regulators allege that SBF and his team systematically misappropriated client funds. Even the FTX software was manipulated for this purpose. According to a financial update filed, FTX’s sister company only had around $475 million in cash in its accounts as of Jan. 31.
