Customers of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX will get all their money back, according to new documents filed in court.
The trustee overseeing the FTX bankruptcy now says that creditors should be made completely whole and receive $11.2 billion U.S. that is owed to them.
The bankruptcy trustee says it has recovered $16.3 billion U.S. from various FTX accounts and asset sales.
The vast majority of FTX customers (about 98%) are retail investors who are each owed $50,000 U.S. or less.
The money owed to FTX customers has been locked up with the exchange since it filed for bankruptcy in November 2022.
FTX’s founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of seven criminal counts last November, including charges that he stole billions of dollars from FTX customers. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The trustee for FTX said it managed to raise much of the recovered money by selling assets, including venture investments held by the exchange.
One of FTX’s most high-profile investments was in privately held artificial intelligence (A.I.) firm Anthropic. FTX sold most of its stake in Anthropic earlier this year for $900 million U.S.
At the same time, cryptocurrency prices have risen sharply since the depths of a bear market in 2022. Bitcoin’s (BTC) price is up more than 250% since FTX went bankrupt.
Sam Bankman-Fried is in the process of appealing his 25-year prison sentence, claiming that he deserves a more lenient sentence given that customers of FTX are getting all their money back.
