Chainalysis Among Long List of FTX Creditors
The bankrupt crypto exchange had partnered with Chainalysis to revamp its anti-money laundering and know-your-customer system
Blockworks Exclusive art by axel rangel
Chainalysis appears to be a creditor in the FTX bankruptcy case, as the company is among what is expected to be a very long list of companies the collapsed exchange owes money to.
Documents filed Wednesday in US bankruptcy court in Delaware named the blockchain analysis firm as a creditor, an entity with a claim against the debtor — in this case FTX Trading.
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who resigned as the company’s CEO when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week, revealed a partnership with Chainalysis in September 2019.
It is unclear what Chainalysis may be owed. A Chainalysis spokesperson declined to comment.
A day before FTX declared bankruptcy, Chainalysis shared on-chain data in a series of tweets to make sense of the impact of FTX’s implosion.
“There’s no sugarcoating it: The potential collapse of an industry stalwart like FTX is bad for crypto, and the market reflects that,” the company said in a Nov. 10 tweet. “But the industry has survived events like this before and emerged stronger. We know it will again.”
Chainalysis one of many creditors
Lawyers representing FTX and affiliates said in a bankruptcy motion on Monday that as many as one million creditors could be named in the suit.
The motion also requested relief from filing a list of the top 20 creditors for each of the 134 FTX affiliated entities that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy — asking instead to permit one consolidated list detailing the top 50 creditors across all FTX companies by Friday.
More clarity around FTX’s balance sheet and creditors is needed to properly parse the odds of the exchange returning funds, partners at law firm Kleinberg Kaplan told Blockworks.
FTX CEO John Jay Ray III, who previously oversaw restructuring efforts at corporate failures such as Enron, said in bankruptcy filings that he had never seen “such a complete failure of corporate controls,” as in FTX’s case.
“From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented,” he said.
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