FTX bankruptcy draft plan hints at offshore exchange reboot, without FTT
FTX’s plan is open to changes based on feedback, and a revised version is expected to be filed in the fourth quarter this year
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Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX filed its initial reorganization plan on Monday, suggesting that it will settle creditor claims in cash as part of the repayment process.
The plan proposes valuing customer claims in US dollars as of the bankruptcy date and repaying them from the liquidation of the FTX-linked estates.
“We are pleased today to deliver on our commitment to file the Plan at this relatively early stage – before the expiration of the customer bar dates, the completion of our pending investigations and the preparation of a disclosure statement,” FTX CEO John J. Ray III said in a statement.
Additionally, the plan categorizes the claimants into different groups, such as the Dotcom customer pool (FTX’s offshore exchange), the US customer pool, NFT holders and general unsecured claims.
As it has done before, FTX considered the prospect of rebooting the company, specifically its offshore exchange, with the intention of excluding US customers from accessing the platform.
“The Debtors [FTX Group] may decide to establish in collaboration with third party investors a new company in a jurisdiction outside of the United States to operate a “rebooted” offshore platform not available to US investors (an “Offshore Exchange Company”) or enter into a merger or similar transaction,” the filing read.
FTX stated the plan is subject to amendments based on feedback from consulting parties, including representatives of the creditors’ committee. An updated version is scheduled to be filed in the fourth quarter of this year.
According to the plan in its current form, there will be no recovery for its native FTT tokens due to their “equity-like characteristics,” as equity is typically eliminated in US bankruptcy reorganizations.
- FTT jumped up to 13.4% on word of the estate’s new plan, from $1.34 to $1.52, before retracing to $1.47 at time of writing.
- That’s still 94% below the $25 recorded just before FTX went kaput last November.
- The token’s fully-diluted value is currently about $478 million.
Matters still to be resolved include determining the projected size of different claim classes and creditor recoveries, devising a plan for trading or transferring claims once it takes effect, and addressing the future management of the offshore exchange if it is relaunched.
In June, the current FTX management published a report indicating that the exchange owed customers, of which there may be more than a million, about $8.7 billion as of the petition date.
It further highlighted that $6.4 billion of the owed amount consisted of fiat currency and stablecoins that were misappropriated.
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