Bloomberg — Liquidators in the Bahamas tasked with winding up the Caribbean outpost of Sam Bankman-Fried’s collapsed crypto empire are readying the sale of a vehicle portfolio as they seek to generate cash to return to creditors.
FTX Digital Markets Ltd. owned a fleet of vehicles used by employees with a book value of $2.4 million, according to a liquidators report issued on Friday. Joint Party Liquidators at Lennox Paton and PwC are looking at selling assets held by FTX’s Bahamian unit, from which Bankman-Fried ran the exchange before its dramatic collapse last year.
“There is no longer a need for the company to maintain the current fleet size,” liquidators said in the report. “The JPLs have commenced a fleet appraisal process following which disposals will commence.”
Selling FTX’s large vehicle fleet may be one of the more straightforward tasks faced by liquidators of the exchange. The first interim report issued since the company’s collapse belies the daunting task of untangling a fraught web of assets and connections at the heart of FTX’s global empire.
FTX Digital was just one cog in the exchange’s wider wheel, which counted more than 130 entities worldwide. Liquidators have already written to 2.4 million FTX customers to date, and have had access to the firm’s assets and employees hampered by a separate US bankruptcy process and various regulatory and criminal investigations.
Among the data uncovered, the filing revealed a definitive figure on the value of digital assets hacked from FTX in the midst of its bankruptcy filing last November, quantified at $323 million. Exact ownership over those assets between FTX’s Bahamian and broader international entities is unknown, the liquidators said, referring to an ongoing dispute over whether the Bahamian regulator cooperated with Bankman-Fried to safeguard assets belonging to local residents.
Of the $219.5 million that FTX Digital held in bank accounts, approximately $44.8 million is stored with banks that the liquidators declined to name as they have yet to recover the funds for the estate. Other banks that worked with FTX’s Bahamian entity include Silvergate Bank, Fidelity Bank, Deltec Bank and Moonstone Bank — the latter of which counted FTX’s trading unit Alameda as an investor.
Liquidators are also engaged in an ongoing battle to recover almost $47 million in frozen crypto from Tether Holdings Ltd, a stablecoin operator which locked the assets in an account belonging to FTX’s Bahamian unit upon a request from the local regulator in November. The liquidators said Tether never transferred the tokens to the estate after freezing them, and plans to engage with the firm to get them back.
Meanwhile, the possibility of relaunching of FTX’s crypto exchange to help customers recover assets, as discussed by new CEO John J. Ray III last month, appeared to be squashed by the Bahamian team. While some salaries of FTX employees were maintained for a while to help with the bankruptcy process, the number of local staff has gone from 83 to 16, making it difficult to explore reorganization.
Liquidators said continuance of trade for FTX is no longer possible due to a lack of licensing after such permissions were suspended, a lack of funding and access to key records, the absence of key members of staff, practical considerations given the state of FTX’s international entities and the public perception of FTX’s brand.
Read more on Bloomberg.com
