The cryptocurrency exchange FTX has collapsed and filed for bankruptcy, deflating the entire crypto market with it.
In brief, hereās whatās happened. Chanpeng Zhao, CEO of the worldās largest crypto exchange Binance, once owned a 20% stake in FTX. He and FTXās CEO, supposed crypto wunderkind Sam Bankman-Fried, maintained a friendly rivalry. Bankman-Fried, known to the technorati as SBF (Zhao is āCZā), bought out Zhaoās stake using crypto tokens issued by FTX in 2021. In early November of 2022, following the souring of CZ and SBFās relationship, the Binance CEO sold those tokens, sending their value tumbling. In response, FTX users scrambled to withdraw some $6 billion in less than 72 hours, money that FTX did not have on hand, largely because it had transferred the assets to its sister company, Alameda Research. Alameda Research made risky crypto bets that didnāt pay off, preventing it from returning SBF announced on Nov. 8 that Binance would acquire FTX, effectively bailing the beleaguered exchange out. CZ did some due diligence, though, and backed out of the deal. SBF desperately sought out investors, who didnāt materialize. Thus FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections in Delaware court.
Because FTX is a tangled network of companies, shells, and related entities, its bankruptcy proceedings promise to be complicated. To make things easier to follow, researcher Seamus Hughes, Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, compiled all the bankruptcy court filings into one handy list. This post originally appeared in Hughesā newsletter, Court Watch.
Itās been a busy week in the cryptocurrency world, to say the least. With FTX collapsing and a lot of moving parts, I thought it may be useful to pull all the bankruptcy filings made so far.
FTX Bankruptcy:
FTX Digital Holdings (Singapore) Pte Ltd
FTX Products (Singapore) Pte Ltd
FTX TURKEY TEKNOLOJI VE TICARET ANONIM SIRKET
West Realm Shires Services Inc.
Thatās it for now.
Reprinted from Court Watch with permission from Seamus Hughes. Subscribe via Substack.