The handler of the X account belonging to Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the founder and former CEO of the beleaguered crypto exchange FTX, posted a link on X late Thursday to a 14-page Google Drive document asserting the exchange was never insolvent.
According to the document shared on the SBF_FTX account, the defunct crypto exchange did not collapse due to massive fraud or mismanagement, per the conclusion of prosecutors and jurors.
“FTX was never insolvent. There have always been enough assets to repay all customers, in full, in kind, both in November 2022 and today,” the shared note read.
The paper insists that when attorneys placed the company under bankruptcy protection in Delaware in 2022, as reported by Cryptopolitan, FTX “was on track to resolve” its liquidity issues before being “disrupted by external counsel.”
At its peak, over seven million customers deposited around $20 billion on the platform. When withdrawals surged in November 2022, FTX froze accounts and filed for bankruptcy with $8 billion still owed to users. For nearly two years, customers had seen little to no progress in recovering their assets.
Customer payouts and the ‘in-kind’ query
Bankman-Fried’s camp claims around 98% of creditors have received 120% of their claims’ petition-date value, while the estate still holds $8 billion after paying out $8 billion in claims and another $1 billion in legal fees. The reimbursement estate expects full repayments between 119% and 143%.
However, FTX repayments are being made in US dollar equivalents rather than in-kind crypto assets. That means a customer owed 1 Bitcoin at the time of bankruptcy received about $17,000, the asset’s value on November 11, 2022, rather than 1 BTC itself.
As of the time of this publication, Bitcoin was trading at around $109,000, higher than the repayment value by about 550%, so many creditors have lost potential gains.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche mentioned the disparity in a policy memo, explaining that digital asset investors in bankruptcies such as FTX were “unable to benefit from corresponding gains that occurred during or after the period in which they were victimized.”
Bankman-Fried’s document says if FTX had not been placed into bankruptcy, the dollarization of claims would never have mattered. Customers could have withdrawn their assets or repurchased them immediately to never lose out on the crypto’s two-year rally.
SBF lodges sabotage accusations against attorneys Sullivan & Cromwell
The document also lays the blame on FTX’s former legal counsel, Sullivan & Cromwell (S&C). S&C became FTX’s primary external counsel in 2021 and “wrested control” of the company in November 2022 with the help of Ryne Miller, FTX US General Counsel and a former S&C partner, and Zach Dexter, CEO of FTX US Derivatives.
After taking control of the firm, SBF claims, “S&C’s guy,” attorney John J. Ray III placed FTX and Alameda Research into bankruptcy and retained S&C as the firm’s own bankruptcy counsel. The filing accuses these lawyers of being “heavily incentivized” to initiate bankruptcy proceedings and to pay themselves directly from FTX’s funds.
The document also lambasted S&C for going behind Bankman-Fried’s back to contact federal prosecutors while he was still their client and CEO of FTX. On November 9, 2022, S&C attorneys allegedly informed the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York about concerns over FTX’s finances.
Their cooperation, per SBF’s voice, helped authorities arrest him and secure guilty pleas from former executives Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang. After supposedly orchestrating the bankruptcy, S&C launched a campaign to blame Bankman-Fried for a financial implosion they themselves triggered.
Missed opportunities to cash in on gains
According to the document, FTX was generating $3 million daily and $1 billion annually when it was shuttered. FTX also had stakes in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic and brokerage firm Robinhood.
The Anthropic investment, which Ray reportedly dismissed as “just a bunch of people with an idea,” was sold for a $0.9 billion profit but is now estimated to be worth $14.3 billion. Also offloaded was holdings in Sui for under $100 million, an asset later valued near $1 billion at market debut and $2.9 billion today.
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