Let’s see the latest news regarding the saga of the crypto exchange FTX, which went bankrupt in November 2022 with a fraud of 8 billion dollars: 15 months later, a bankruptcy judge approved the request of the restructuring company “Kroll Restructuring Administration LLC” to liquidate the stakes held in the company AI Anthropic.
The shares, which represent a 7.84% stake in the startup, had a value of $500 million in June 2023, while now they are worth about $1 billion.
FTX by completing this settlement is getting closer and closer to the goal of repaying all the platform’s creditors.
Let’s see all the details below.
FTX crypto news: a court gives the green light to liquidate the participatory shares of the company AI Anthropic
Great news for the creditors of the now deceased FTX exchange, who see the possibility of getting back their lost funds after the corporate restructuring company Kroll received approval to liquidate the shares of an AI startup AI, previously acquired by Sam Bankman Fried’s group.
Yesterday in Wilmington, Delaware, US bankruptcy judge John Dorsey approved FTX’s proposal to sell all its stakes in Anthropic, a company that develops general artificial intelligence systems and large-scale language models.
The decision to liquidate the assets still held by the failed crypto exchange comes as part of Kroll’s effort to maximize internal resources, in an attempt to compensate as much as possible the customers who had lost access to their account in November 2022.
In this regard, Andy Dietderich, lawyer for FTX, stated the following words in yesterday’s court hearing:
“We are selling the shares of Anthropic, as well as selling everything, and putting the money in the bank”
In total, the shares in question guarantee the exchange 7.84% of Anthropic, for a value that in June 2023 was estimated at 500 million dollars.
In reality, when FTX invested in the project in 2021, the stake was 13.56%, but it was immediately diluted after the $4 billion investment led by tech giant Amazon.
In June 2023, 7 months after the collapse of FTX, John J.Ray III and the rest of the individuals tasked with liquidating the platform’s assets had considered the idea of selling Anthropic’s shares through the financial services company Perella Weinberg Partners.
However, they immediately decided to backtrack as soon as the company released the promising AI model Claude 2.
The sale did not materialize even after October 2023, when the US Department of Justice stated that FTX’s investment in Anthropic was irrelevant to the case against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
Today thanks to the progress made by the startup and thanks to the foresight of Kroll who saw potential in Anthropic’s innovations, FTX’s investment has doubled and is worth about 1 billion dollars.
The other liquidations of FTX and the refund of users
That of Anthropic is just the latest news regarding the liquidations of the crypto exchange FTX, which has been selling everything possible since speculative markets have made a comeback in 2023.
In May of last year, the restructuring company in charge of the FTX case sold the derivative trading platform LedgerX to M7 Holdings, in a $50 million deal.
In September there was also the liquidation of the cryptocurrencies still held in the company’s various wallets, which owned a large amount of Solana coins, as well as Bitcoin, Ethereum and other crypto assets.
According to court documents, FTX at the time had a balance of 1.6 billion dollars in SOL, 560 million dollars in BTC, 192 million dollars in ETH, and 137 million dollars in APT.
Many of these coins have been sold for FIAT at a pace of $100 million per week, just as the market was recovering from the 2022 bear market. Especially SOL tokens have been substantially downsized, freeing the crypto from the burden of FTX holding.
In November, the failed exchange received authorization to sell $873 million in Grayscale and Bitwise trusts, at a favorable time when the NAV discount for both products had flattened out.
After tightening the belt for months and saving what could be saved, the current management of FTX has amassed a total sum of 6.4 billion dollars (liquid), suggesting that now they have everything they need to repay the former platform clients.
According to Reuters, FTX plans to settle the entire debt soon, although the repayment will be based on the prices of the cryptocurrencies present in users’ accounts in November 2022, when the company declared bankruptcy, rather than the current market prices.
Meanwhile Sam Bankman Fried, former CEO of the exchange and mastermind of the multibillion-dollar financial fraud, is in prison and faces a sentence of 110 years after being found guilty in the latest trial of November 2023.
The final verdict for Bankman-Fried is scheduled for March 28, 2024.