FTX US identified around $180 million in assets to be seized by its creditors, of which more than half were already gone.
As the bankruptcy and reorganization tale of FTX and its related organizations continues to unravel, more examples of assets being moved away from the exchange are revealed.
The US Department of Justice has already initiated an investigation into the $400 million cyberattack that depleted FTX’s assets. The court will eventually establish whether the attack was perpetrated by malicious individuals benefitting from the catastrophic collapse of the exchange or if it was an inside job.
Nonetheless, according to information revealed today at a meeting with the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors (UCC) of FTX, the entire amount of assets lost as a result of hacking after the bankruptcy is about $10 million, or less than $500 million.
This constitutes a major portion of the purportedly identified $5.5 billion in liquid assets by the debtors to date.
Unfortunately, the preceding numbers pertain to assets owned by the whole FTX Group. Only $181 million in liquid assets have reportedly been located for the US corporation involved in the collapsed exchange. 88 million dollars have already been put in cold storage under the hands of FTX creditors, with an additional $3 million in assets awaiting transfer to cold storage.
According to John J. Ray III, the new CEO of FTX who was brought in to lead the restructuring process because of his expertise with comparable bankruptcies such as Enron, the material disclosed on the conference call is preliminary and required “Herculean efforts” to discover.
This preliminary information was uncovered by our team after a Herculean effort of investigation. We urge that our stakeholders recognize that this material is preliminary and subject to modification. We will offer other details as soon as possible.”
The interim CEO has already criticized FTX for an almost unparalleled lack of corporate supervision and due diligence. Given the random nature of the company’s accounting, Mr Ray’s estimation of the work required to identify these assets is, more often than not, right.
Mr Ray also informed creditors that he and the team he assembled to clean up the mess at FTX would do everything necessary to return as many assets as feasible to FTX creditors.
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