FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried got in touch today. He shared a link to his own article, which became the so-called premortem, in which Sam voiced the details and his vision of what happened to the platform.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s new article

It is worth noting that no admission of guilt is involved in the material. Furthermore, Bankman-Fried blames Binance’s CEO Changpen Zhao who, shortly before FTX went bankrupt, announced that the platform had sold all the FTT coins in its possession. Of course, the exchange had the right to do so, but Sam didn’t let that stop him.

In addition, he claimed that an effective PR campaign had allegedly been conducted against the FTX exchange for months beforehand. Accordingly, Sam makes himself a victim of circumstances and does not recall that he is accused of misusing users’ funds. And if one goes through Bankman-Fried’s publication, his guilt may indeed be in doubt.

Apparently, Sam’s defence will use roughly this strategy at the trial. It will, we should remind you, start at the beginning of October 2023.

Where is the FTX users’ money

Landis noted that his team has also identified more than 9 million client accounts linked to transactions worth around $120 billion. The process of determining the value of positions for November 11 “for each client” is currently underway. As a reminder, it was the day FTX filed for formal bankruptcy, which led to the current restructuring of the company and the further arrest of platform founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

Also at the start of the hearing, US bankruptcy judge John Dorsey briefly referred to a letter he had received from four US senators, calling it “an inappropriate communication on one side”. It is unclear whether the judge mentioned the names of the senators in court, as the audio quality of Wednesday morning’s live stream of the hearing was poor.

Unfortunately, the streaming of the hearing has already been removed from the court’s official website

As the trial continues, the FTX legal team will try to recover the funds for later repayment to clients. The total amount owed is still unclear, although various estimates put it as high as $10 billion, Decrypt reports. The exact number of creditors is also difficult to determine: the figure is believed to be over 100,000 different people and organisations owed by the exchange.

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According to Cointelegraph sources, the restructuring process is also ongoing for Three Arrows Capital (3AC), a major crypto fund that went bankrupt last year. Its co-founder Kyle Davies said the first meeting with 3AC’s creditors was held on 11 January. That said, they are still expressing concerns about the length of the process. Here’s how Davies commented.

We and 3AC’s other creditors are frustrated with the current bankruptcy process. Ongoing costs are high, assets are not handled thoughtfully, disputes between creditors prolong the process, and property values are not maximised.

Three Arrows Capital co-founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies

According to Davies, the best way forward is to "reduce the current legal costs, pursue claims on a contingent basis against the Luna/FTX/Genesis consortium", and arrange better ways to liquidate assets. Creditors will likely have to wait even longer, as it's most profitable to sell crypto after the next bull run starts.

By the way, Genesis has enough problems right now, too. As it became known today, the amount of liabilities of the bandwagon platform is $3 billion. And its financial problems became evident when Genesis’ problems caused it to stop withdrawals for Gemini Earn users in November 2022. The latter was re-depositing money from users of Genesis, so the negative situation with the latter led to current results.

Head of Digital Currency Group Barry Silbert, whose company owns Genesis

We believe the recovery of a significant amount of assets from the FTX exchange by the restructuring team is good news. It hints at a quicker prospect of returning funds to the victims of the platform's collapse than anticipated. And while it is impossible to predict a final payment date, progress on the case will surely help creditors in a more favourable position in the future.