FTX draft bankruptcy plan could see cash for creditors

FTX Group unveiled a draft creditor-repayment plan as part of its bankruptcy that calls for settling customer claims in cash and wiping out its digital token FTT. 

The plan — which FTX expects to amend based on feedback from stakeholders — proposes valuing customer claims in US dollars as of the date it went bankrupt and repaying them by selling assets tied to various silos of the business, court papers show. FTX also still hasn’t ruled out rebooting an offshore exchange, according to the filings. 

Three so-called recovery pools will guide creditor repayments. They include assets linked to FTX.com customers, assets linked to FTX US customers and assets not clearly tied to the exchanges, court papers show. Almost every proposed creditor class is deemed impaired, meaning the company expects they will not be made whole.

The plan calls for giving no recovery on account of FTT tokens due to their “equity-like characteristics,” advisers for FTX wrote in the filings. Equity is almost always wiped out in US bankruptcy reorganizations. 

PLAN IN 'INFANCY'

FTX emphasized that the plan is still in its infancy and subject to change. The draft calls for allowing seven classes of creditors to vote on the plan, including FTX.com customers, FTX US customers and nonfungible token holders. 

“We are pleased today to deliver on our commitment to file the plan at this relatively early stage,” FTX Chief Restructuring Officer John J. Ray III said in a statement. The company intends to collaborate with creditors in the coming months and file an amended plan in the fourth quarter of this year, he said.

The draft “provides an initial construct for a global settlement and good-faith compromise of an exceptionally large and complicated collection of claims,” according to the court filing.

Among outstanding questions are estimates of creditor recoveries, the priority to be assigned to exchange shortfall claims and the decision and manner in which the FTX.com exchange is sold or reorganized, the filing indicated.

Chaotic Fall

Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX empire fell apart last November, stoking turmoil in the crypto sector and spurring officials in the US and elsewhere to tighten regulatory oversight of digital assets.

FTX’s collapse included a crash in its native coin, FTT. The token, once worth over $80, is up some 10% in the past 24 hours to $1.50, CoinGecko data shows.

The company’s new management said in a June report that the FTX.com exchange owed customers approximately $8.7 billion when it filed for bankruptcy. More than $6.4 billion of the deficit was in the form of fiat currency and stablecoins that had been misappropriated, the report alleged.

The management team at the time said it had made “substantial progress” in securing assets and has recovered about $7 billion in liquid assets so far. 

Bankman-Fried has rejected an array of charges and faces a trial in October.