By Dietrich Knauth
NEW YORK (Reuters) – FTX received court approval of its bankruptcy plan on Monday, which will allow it to fully repay customers using $16 billion in assets recovered since the once-leading crypto exchange collapsed.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey approved the wind-down plan at a court hearing in Wilmington, Delaware.
The plan is built on a series of settlements with FTX customers and creditors, U.S. government agencies, and liquidators appointed to wind down FTX’s operations outside the U.S.
The settlements allow FTX to use its assets to repay customers of its crypto exchange first, before paying potentially competing claims filed by government regulators.
Once among the world’s top crypto exchanges, FTX’s downfall shook the sector, leaving an estimated 9 million customers and investors facing billions of dollars in losses.
FTX’s plan will pay its customers at least 118% of the value in their accounts as of November 2022, the date that the company filed for bankruptcy.
FTX said the result was a victory for creditors, made possible by its ability to recover cash and crypto assets that had gone missing during the company’s chaotic collapse. The company also raised additional funds by selling off other assets, including its investments in tech companies like the artificial-intelligence startup Anthropic.
Customers have had a mixed response to the plan, with many expressing disappointment that FTX’s demise caused them to miss out on a strong rebound in crypto prices since the market bottomed out in 2022. Some customers had objected to the plan, demanding higher repayments reflecting recent rises in cryptocurrency values.
FTX said that it was not possible to simply return the crypto assets customers had deposited, because customers’ assets were gone, misappropriated by founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
Bankman-Fried was sentenced in March to 25 years in prison for defrauding FTX customers. He has appealed his conviction.
(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth in New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Matthew Lewis)
