FTX Recovered $5 Billion Worth of ‘Liquid’ Assets, Attorneys Say

The Founder and former CEO of crypto currency exchange FTX Sam Bankman-Fried arrives at the Magistrate Court building in Nassau, Bahamas, on Dec. 19, 2022. Dante Carrer/Reuters

Crypto exchange FTX has more than $5 billion in cash and liquid cryptocurrencies and securities, an attorney for the beleaguered company confirmed on Wednesday.

The Sam Bankman-Fried-founded company filed for bankruptcy in November and U.S. prosecutors have accused Bankman-Fried of orchestrating fraudulent activity that may have cost investors, customers, and lenders billions of dollars. Attorneys and advisers overseeing the bankrupt company are now trying to recover funds to repay creditors.

“We have located over $5 billion of cash, liquid cryptocurrency, and liquid investment securities measured at petition date value. Our holdings are so large relative to the total supply that our positions cannot be sold without substantially affecting the market for the token,” Andy Dietderich, an attorney for FTX, told a Delaware judge.

Dietderich also said that the company plans to sell non-strategic investments that had a book value of $4.6 billion, although the company’s books have been described as unreliable.

The $5 billion recovery is in connection to “any value to holdings of dozens of illiquid cryptocurrency tokens, where our holdings are so large relative to the total supply that our positions cannot be sold without substantially affecting the market for the token,” FTX attorney Adam Landis told the court Wednesday, reported CNBC.

The total that FTX owes to its creditors following its collapse and subsequent bankruptcy is not clear. In bankruptcy filings two months ago, the company’s management said that between $1 billion and $10 billion could be owed.

Weeks after the firm declared bankruptcy, Bankman-Fried was charged by U.S. prosecutors with allegedly masterminding a scheme to defraud customers and for allegedly making illegal political contributions. Reports say that the company overwhelmingly favored Democrat candidates and causes over Republican ones amid calls for some candidates to return those donations.

This month, Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty on all criminal charges related to the fallout of the exchange. Meanwhile, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York previously formed an FTX taskforce to “trace and recover” missing customer funds and handle investigations in connection to the collapse.

Barbara Fried, the mother of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, arrives for his arraignment and bail hearings at Manhattan Federal Court in New York City, on Dec. 22, 2022. David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

Bankman-Fried, a crypto mogul also known as SBF, is accused of stealing billions of dollars in FTX customer deposits to support his Alameda Research hedge fund, buy real estate, and issue millions of dollars in aforementioned political donations. He could face as long as 115 years in prison if convicted on all the charges, prosecutors have said.

In December, he was extradited from the Bahamas, where his company was based, after reportedly spending several days in a notorious Bahamian jail. During a later hearing, he was released to his parent’s home in Palo Alto, California, on a $250 million bond.

Lawyers for Bankman-Fried have said his parents, who co-signed the bond, have been receiving physical threats since FTX’s collapse, and that other co-signers might face similar harassment unless their names were kept secret. On Tuesday, the judge also imposed a new bail condition, saying Bankman-Fried cannot access FTX or Alameda assets.

The prosecution’s case against Bankman-Fried was strengthened weeks ago after two of his former associates, Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang, pleaded guilty to federal charges and agreed to cooperate. Ellison had served as the head of Alameda while Wang was FTX’s chief technology officer before the two companies collapsed.

Just days before he was charged, the FTX founder struck an apparently somber tone during a Wall Street Journal interview, saying that he could not account for billions in lost funds. He also wasn’t sure whether he violated FTX’s terms.

“I don’t know of a violation of the terms of use,” Bankman-Fried conceded in December’s interview. “I don’t know every line of the terms of use. I can’t confidently say there wasn’t, but I don’t know of one.”

“I ask myself a lot how I made a series of mistakes that seem—they don’t just seem dumb,” said Bankman-Fried, who gave an interview to the paper from his former home in the Bahamas. “They seem like the type of mistakes I could see myself having ridiculed someone else for having made.”

Reuters contributed to this report.