Understanding Depositor Remedies For FTX And Other Cryptocurrency Failures

Cryptocurrency company FTX and its young founder, Samuel Bankman-Fried (“Sam”), once were valued at nearly $30 billion. The company was a hub for all things crypto, performing several key roles in the sector. Investors used FTX as a trading platform to make crypto bets. FTX supported its own crypto token, FTT, and speculatively traded in various cryptocurrencies for its own benefit. FTX also was a financier in numerous other crypto-related ventures.

FTX and SBF ultimately did none of these things well, landing in competing bankruptcy proceedings in the Bahamas, as well as ancillary proceedings known as Chapter 15 in Delaware. Customers, investors and others now are wondering: What’s the future? How will SBF’s structures, transactions, investments, and other machinations be unwound? How will FTX’s assets be liquidated?

To fully understand FTX and the challenges for its many creditors, one must first realize the full extent of this scandal and that FTX was not the only player involved. FTX was simply one cog in the machine of a much bigger and overarching scandal ― if not conspiracy ― that involved other major crypto players such as Three Arrows Capital and Celsius
CEL
Network, as well as numerous smaller players. All of these players engaged through each other in what are basically circular transactions in the aggregate to artificially boost either their own share price (if publicly traded), book value of their assets so that they could obtain credit and loans, and the value of their own proprietary cryptos that they offered or had been the target of their investments.

Many of the crypto firms were effectively investing in each other, either through equity purchases, or more often buying each other’s propriety cryptos, such that they were all…