• by Colin Kirkland , May 8, 2024

According to bankruptcy lawyers representing FTX, the defunct crypto exchange plans to pay back almost all of the creditors defrauded in the November 2022 collapse, plus interest, after collecting assets valued between $14.5 and $16.3 billion.

Once the motion is approved by a bankruptcy court, non-government creditors who are owed $50,000 or less (which makes up 98% of all affected creditors) should receive at least 118% of their money back within 60 days.

However, it must be noted that these customers have missed out on significant gains in the crypto market and will only receive the amount their assets were worth at the time of FTX’s collapse.

For example, the price of Bitcoin has more than tripled since then.

FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection 17 months ago after deceiving its investors -- causing customers to lose about $8 billion, investors to lose $1.7 billion and lenders shorted by $1.3 billion.

At the time, it held a mere 0.1% of the Bitcoin and 1.2% of the Ethereum cryptocurrency that its customers believed it possessed.

Co-founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried received a 25-year prison sentence in March, after he was found guilty on seven counts related to fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering. U.S. attorney John J. Ray III took over as CEO and “chief restructuring officer” and has discovered assets in real estate, political donations, and venture capital investments that have been sold to pay back creditors.