FTX Founder Spoke After Crypto Bankruptcy & Crash: ‘I Feel Deeply Sorry’

The founder of the FTX cryptocurrency platform, Sam Bankman-Fried, one of the youngest billionaires in the world with $22.5 billion, apologized to his employees in a letter in which he assures that he will do everything possible to make things “go back to the way they were”.

“I feel deeply sorry of what happened. I’m sorry for everything that happened to them and what happened to our customers,” Bankman-Fried wrote in text reproduced by the cryptocurrency’s website. CoinDesk and other specialized media.

FTX filed for bankruptcy Nov. 11, and yesterday the company’s new managers appeared in Delaware state bankruptcy court for the first time to begin the restructuring process.

Lawyers for the new board and the current chief executive, John Ray, argue that a “substantial amount” of the company’s assets they may have been stolen or have disappeared.

The new executives also denounced the company as having “a complete absence of corporate oversight” and a lack of “reliable financial information”.

The platform, which has been valued at $32 billion, may have more than a million creditors worldwide. So far, the company has admitted it owes more than $3,000 million to its fifty principal creditors.

However, in the letter to his employees, which he refers to as “family,” Bankman-Fried attributes the failure in part to massive sale of cryptocurrencies occurred at the beginning of the year.

For the FTX founder, that sale cut FTX’s collateral in half, by about $30,000 million.

At this point, Bankman-Fried explains, the crypto selling continued, combined with a credit crunch and a “leak on the bank,” which reduced collateral to $9 billion before FTX filed for bankruptcy.

However, the letter makes no reference to that disappearance or theft of assets, nor to allegations that client funds were redirected to its associated investment firm, Alameda.

More than a million investors affected by the collapse of cryptocurrencies

It includes applicants from all over the world, from German banks to Chinese and Vietnamese investors more than a million creditors involved in the collapse of FTX Group, according to data from court documents filed in the courts of Delaware, in the United States, where the bankruptcy of the cryptocurrency firm is pending.

The company, which until three weeks ago integrated the top 3 exchange platforms of the largest cryptocurrencies in the world, it is now facing complaints from hundreds of thousands of users who have never been able to withdraw the funds or cryptocurrencies deposited on its platform, after freezing withdrawals on Nov. 7 for, days after , file for bankruptcy.

The data on creditors of smaller amounts are among the most varied and involving more than 1 million companies and peopleso the case can take years to conclude.

The creditors attached screenshots of company accounts or emails they had received from FTX as proof of what they were owed.

These include a Frankfurt-based German bank, which says FTX owes it $2.3 million for deposits that include Bitcoin, Ethereum and dollars, according to the documents; a creditor of Chinese origin, with a claim of just over US$21,000; and a slew of complaints from Taiwan-based investors, Bloomberg reported.

It’s unclear how much money will be generated from the FTX liquidation, and many creditors may receive only fractions of what they owe, if at all. The process can take months in minor cases and years for large multimillion-dollar bankruptcies.

This is because alleged debts, which are generally unsecured, are subject to a process designed to eliminate any false, inflated or duplicate claims.

FTX is believed to have used billions of dollars from its clients to fund risky bets through its investment firm Alameda Research, which is why authorities in the Bahamas and the United States are investigating possible crimes committed by the company founded by Sam Bankman-Fried .

SL