FTX-Where Did the Money Go - Sam Bankman-Fried

Source: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e2v-rcUqSFy4VI1MlWTLkJe-IeaFYBnl/view?usp=sharing

1. FTX: Where Did The Money Go?
What Should Have Happened
What Actually Happened
Draining The Estate: A Breakdown

1
3
7
13

Written by: Sam Bankman-Fried
and his team

Last updated: 9/30/25

FTX: Where Did The Money Go?
​
Over seven million customers deposited around twenty billion dollars to the cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
In November 2022, when customers tried to withdraw their money, FTX filed for bankruptcy with $8 billion
still owed to customers. For a couple of years, customers got nothing back. Where did those billions go?
The answer is they never left. After two years’ delay, the estate revealed that all customers would be repaid at
119% to 143%.
1
Around 98% of creditors have already received 120%, and after paying out $8 billion in
claims and $1 billion in lawyer fees, the estate still has $8 billion left.
2
In fact, FTX was never insolvent. There
have always been enough assets to repay all customers—in full, in kind—both in November 2022, and today.​

​
Source: FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 507-1 (1/17/23), ‘Presentation to the Official Committee of Unsecured
Creditors,’ listing assets worth approximately $15 billion as of the date of the bankruptcy filing.​

The crisis FTX faced in November 2022 was a liquidity crisis, i.e., a sudden shortage of cash. It was on track to
be resolved by the end of the month—that is, until FTX’s external counsel seized control.
FTX was never bankrupt, even when its lawyers placed it into bankruptcy.
2
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 14301, p. 8 (“convenience classes” ≈ “98% of customers”), Doc 32371, pp.
4-5, 17, https://theblock.co/post/371486/ftx-to-pay-out-additional-1-6-billion-to-creditors-in-third-distribution,
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/Ftxs-950-million-bankruptcy-fees-among-costliest-since-lehman
1
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 19143, p. 8: “customers and digital asset loan creditors will recover
between 119% and 143% of their Petition Date claim values,” Doc 29834, p. 3; ask price of $1m+ claims is ~149%
(https://claims-market.com); ‘FTX Is The Rare Financial Blowup That Will Repay Victims In Full,’ Wall St Journal (5/8/24)
1

2. But there’s a more complicated story, too, which is that the years’ delay and the dissipation of the company’s
equity value is due to the actions of the bankruptcy team.

​​Remaining complaints
​
While the headline is that customers are getting back 119-143%, there are still some complaints.​

​​The wait
The first common complaint is that FTX’s liquidity crisis was in 2022, but customers are being repaid in 2025.​

​​Dollarization
Furthermore, customers are getting back the petition-date USD value of their claims, not the in-kind crypto.
For instance, if a customer was owed 1 bitcoin, their claim was automatically turned into roughly
$17,000—the price of 1 bitcoin on November 11
th
, 2022, the day FTX filed for bankruptcy. But 1 bitcoin is now
worth (considerably) more than $17,000, and so customers would prefer to get back their assets in kind.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche raised this issue in his memo ‘Ending Regulation By Prosecution’:
3

Following the prolonged period of price decline in the digital asset market in 2022, multiple
companies with custody of investors' digital assets collapsed and entered bankruptcy,
including FTX . . . However, as a result of regulations, some digital asset investor victims have
only been able to recover the value of their digital assets at the time the fraud was perpetrated.
. . . [and so] are unable to benefit from corresponding gains that occurred during or after the
period in which they were victimized and would otherwise have possessed the asset. This is a mirror image of the first complaint. Without the two-year wait, in-kind vs. dollarized wouldn’t matter
much; if a customer got $17,000, they could just buy back the bitcoin they had in the first place. But as is,
some customers are being repaid today less than the current value of the crypto they were originally owed.​

Equity investors
Finally, there are equity investors, who invested roughly $1.95 billion into FTX.
4
They are getting back $230
million
5
—a small fraction of their investments, both in terms of actual payments, and in terms of the going
concern value of the company.
5
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ftx-shareholders-to-recover-230-million-from-government-seized-assets-45b744ab
4
United States v. Bankman-Fried 1:22-cr-00673, GX-26
3
https://www.justice.gov/dag/media/1395781/dl (4/7/25)
2

3. What Should Have Happened
​
It would be natural to assume that the two-year delay meant
it was impossible for FTX to repay customers in 2022, that
the dollarization happened because FTX lacked sufficient
assets to repay customers in kind, and that FTX had little left
over for equity investors after making customers whole. But as it turns out, FTX always had sufficient assets to repay
all customers, in kind, and provide significant value to
equity holders as well. That is what would have happened if
lawyers hadn’t taken over FTX.

The data
​
The following table is compiled from the Debtor estate’s January 2023 presentation to creditors, which
estimated the value of the estate’s assets as of November 11
th
, 2022—the date FTX filed for bankruptcy.
6

Asset Value according to the Debtors (11/11/22)
Liquid assets (cash, liquid crypto, liquid securities) $5.5 billion
Illiquid tokens $3.7 billion
Hacked crypto
7
$0.4 billion
Venture investments $4.6 billion
Real estate $0.3 billion
Licensed subsidiaries (LedgerX, Embed, FTX EU, FTX JP) [$0.1 billion]
8

Total $14.6 billion

Note that this list of assets does not include FTX equity held by the company’s executives. FTX was
majority-owned by CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and had received a valuation of $40 billion earlier that year.
9

9
“Sam owned 60 percent of FTX: 60 percent of $40 billion was $24 billion”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2023/michael-lewis-sam-bankman-fried-ftx-crypto/
8
The estate ultimately sold LedgerX for $50m, FTX EU for $33m and FTX JP for tens of millions of USD
7
Hacked after the lawyers took control of the company
6
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 507-1 (1/17/23)
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.deb.188450/gov.uscourts.deb.188450.507.1.pdf
3

4. Today, FTX’s petition-date holdings would be worth an estimated $136 billion.​

Asset Petition-date allocation Market value (9/30/25)
Anthropic 7.84%
10
$14.3 billion
Robinhood 7.6%
11
$7.6 billion
Genesis Digital Assets $1,150,000,000 (cost basis)
12
$1.2 billion
SpaceX (via K5 Global) $189,700,000 (cost basis)
13
$0.6 billion
Solana 58,000,000 tokens
14
$12.4 billion
Sui 890,000,000 token warrants
15
$2.9 billion
Bitcoin 20,500 coins
16
$2.3 billion
Ripple 225,400,000 tokens
16
$0.6 billion
Ethereum 112,600 coins
16
$0.5 billion
USD-pegged stablecoins (USDT, USDC, USDP, DAI) $345,200,000
17
$0.3 billion
FTT 267,000,000 tokens
18
$21.9 billion
FTX equity 82.5%
19
$66.4 billion
Brokerage (ETHE, GBTC, BITW) $263,000,000
20
$2.6 billion
Real estate $253,000,000 (cost basis)
21
$0.4 billion
Cash $1,729,200,000
22
$1.7 billion
Estimated portfolio total
23
- $136 billion
23
This analysis uses the January 2024 stake size for Anthropic—which would have been diluted by an unknown amount
in later raises—but it also only looks at 15 petition-date holdings (hundreds of others can be found at FTX Trading Ltd.
22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 966, Doc 1001, Doc 1027, https://ft.com/content/aaa4a42c-efcc-4c60-9dc6-ba6cccb599e6)
22
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 507-1 (1/17/23), p. 8
21
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 507-1 (1/17/23), p. 17; https://thetimes.com/life-style/property-home/
article/why-the-bahamas-still-has-a-licence-to-thrill-for-homebuyers-rz8lf9q2d (5/14/24)
20
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 507-1 (1/17/23), p. 13
19
United States v. Bankman-Fried 1:22-cr-00673, Tr. 324, Tr. 686; https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/
2023/michael-lewis-sam-bankman-fried-ftx-crypto/ (value today estimated using BNB’s % price change since 1/3/22)
18
https://thecryptobasic.com/2023/11/10/ftt-surges-200-ftx-creditors-gain-427m-but-cant-cash-out (counterfactual
price today estimated by applying BNB’s % price change since 11/1/22 to FTT’s price on 11/1/22)
17
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 966, Doc 1001, Doc 1027
16
https://www.coingecko.com/research/publications/ftx-crypto-holdings
15
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/11/business/dealbook/ftx-sam-bankman-fried.html
14
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/can-solana-survive-the-collapse-of-ftx
13
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-06-26/ftx-spent-big-on-celebrity
12
https://crunchbase.com/funding_round/genesis-digital-assets-private-equity--11626322, https://theblock.co/post/
372026/ftx-trust-sues-bitcoin-miner-genesis-digital-seeks-1-15-billion-over-reckless-sam-bankman-fried-investment
11
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-12/emergent-fidelity-files-13d-on-robinhood-reports-7-6-stake
10
https://reuters.com/technology/crypto-exchange-ftx-sell-shares-ai-startup-anthropic-2024-02-22 (pre-recent dilution)
4

5. Pre-bankruptcy
​
Alameda and FTX were never insolvent; their assets always exceeded their liabilities. Going into the liquidity
crisis in November 2022, the companies held $25 billion of assets, plus another $16 billion of FTX equity
value, against $13 billion in liabilities, resulting in a net asset value of roughly +$28 billion. During the crisis,
the value of the assets and (presumably) equity took a temporary hit, but even at the peak of the crisis, the
companies remained solvent—even if one were to ignore equity. As such, it was always possible for FTX to repay customers, in full, in kind.
When FTX’s external counsel took over the company on November 11
th
2022, the company was in the process
of paying customers. The liquidity crisis had led to a ‘run on the bank,’ with customers withdrawing roughly
$1 billion on November 6
th
and roughly $4 billion on the 7
th
—compared to average-day withdrawals of $50
million. FTX paid down this first $5 billion in liabilities, and began liquidating its remaining
assets—additionally secured with FTX equity—to cover the remaining $8 billion of potential demand.
FTX was securing deals that would have covered that remaining $8 billion, allowing it to expedite repayment
and solve the ‘run on the bank’ by the end of November 2022.
24



​
The funds had already begun to be delivered; customer withdrawals were resuming.
25

And FTX was still generating roughly $3 million per day of fees during the crisis—keeping with its $1 billion
per year pace—so the platform would still have had far more value to investors than the $2 billion they had
invested.
26

There never was an insolvency crisis, FTX was never bankrupt, and no one had lost anything prior to the
lawyers’ intervention. Were it not for their intervention, FTX would have made good on all of its liabilities in
November 2022.
26
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/20/ftx-grew-revenue-1000percent-during-the-crypto-craze-leaked-financials.html
25
https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1590585495649923073 (11/10/22)
24
United States v. Bankman-Fried 1:22-cr-00673, Doc 407-34, p. 34 (Tron), p. 42 (Tron, post-bankruptcy), p. 45 (Nomura)
5

6. Post-bankruptcy
​
Instead, FTX’s external counsel took over the
company, and payouts were delayed until
2025. What could, and should, stakeholders
be getting today?​
​
If you take the petition-date balances and
update them with current prices, you get
what the Debtor estate would look like if the
bankruptcy team had taken no actions since
getting control of the company.​
​
The estate would have had approximately:
●​$69 billion of Alameda assets
●​$66 billion of FTX equity
●​$25 billion of liabilities
​
The resulting net value would have been
around +$111 billion. And that $25 billion of
liabilities is assuming in-kind payments to
customers—i.e. that a customer owed 1
bitcoin would be paid that bitcoin, currently
worth $114,000, rather than the $17,000
‘dollarized’ claim the estate is paying.
27
​
​
$136 billion of assets and equity would
clearly have been sufficient to pay back the
$25 billion to all customers, in kind. The
estate would then have been left with $44
billion in assets plus $66 billion in
going-concern value for a return on equity
investors’ $2 billion investment.
27
According to FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 32371, p. 15, allowed secured, customer, and other general
unsecured claims total $8.4b in petition-date value; according to the bankruptcy specialist and FTX creditor advocate
known as Mr. Purple on ?????? (https://forbes.com/sites/ninabambysheva/2024/06/10/why-ftxs-generous-bankruptcy-
payouts-still-leave-some-creditors-cold), paying the ~$2.8b in non-FTT crypto claims in kind as of 8/20/25 would add
$13.6b (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uMLq2BkNXoTmlxzzXm1BqJLbsQEc6dm5/edit?gid=674287390#
gid=674287390, cell S253); +$0.2b brings that up to 9/30/25 prices; +$2.5b adds in FTT modelled on BNB
6

7. ​​What Actually Happened
​
Customers should have been repaid in 2022, but in fact are being repaid in 2025. The estate has recovered
roughly $18 billion of assets, rather than $136 billion.
28
What caused these discrepancies?

​​Seizing FTX
​
Sullivan & Cromwell (S&C/SullCrom) became FTX’s primary external
counsel in 2021. In November 2022, S&C utilized Ryne Miller,
General Counsel of FTX US and a former S&C partner, and Zach
Dexter, CEO of FTX US Derivatives, to wrest control of FTX:
29
​

29


29

29
United States v. Bankman-Fried 1:22-cr-00673, Doc 407-34, pp. 2, 14, 22
28
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 32371, https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/ftxs-950-million-
bankruptcy-fees-among-costliest-since-lehman (claims distributions and legal fees to date + remaining assets = $17.6b)
7

8. 30

​
Within hours of taking over, attorney
John J. Ray III—“S&C’s guy,” in the
words of Ryne Miller—placed FTX and
Alameda into an omnibus Delaware
bankruptcy.
31
He then retained S&C
as bankruptcy counsel.
32
​

These lawyers were heavily
incentivized to file for bankruptcy.
Once FTX became a Debtors’ estate
that they controlled, the lawyers
could pay themselves, at their own
discretion, out of FTX’s billions of
dollars:
33
​

But FTX was never bankrupt.
34

[Voiceover] Ray had . . . fired dozens of FTX staff, some of whom knew the company inside and
out. Dan Chapsky, FTX’s Chief Data Scientist, was one of the last employees left. . . . Like Sam,
Dan believed many customers could have been repaid and the exchange restarted, maybe
within weeks if Ray and his team would just work with people inside the company.
[Dan Chapsky] They had no idea what they were doing. They were just looking at the data and
hoping for the best.
[Voiceover] Dan agreed with Sam who was saying the money was there—just tied up—and that
bankruptcy wasn’t necessary.
34
https://revealnews.org/podcast/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-collapse-part-1
33
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 530 (1/19/23), pp. 8-9 (sworn declaration of Dan Friedberg)
32
https://review.law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/02/Lipson-Skeel-77-Stan.-L.-Rev.-369.pdf, p. 32
31
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 530 (1/19/23), p. 14
30
United States v. Bankman-Fried 1:22-cr-00673, Doc 208-4, p. 3
8

9. What’s more, shortly prior to wresting control of the company, S&C had initiated the prosecution against Sam
Bankman-Fried, going behind his back while he was still S&C’s client and CEO of FTX:
35

On November 9, 2022 . . . S&C attorneys . . . in consultation with Mr. Miller, reported the concern
to federal authorities, including the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of
New York . . . At the direction of Mr. Ray, S&C provided substantial information to government
prosecutors prior to Mr. Bankman-Fried’s arrest, Ms. Ellison’s plea and Mr. Wang’s plea.
[T]he role of S&C in contacting federal prosecutors . . . (at the instruction of Mr. Ryne Miller)
before the Petition Date has been of critical importance to the speed with which federal
prosecutors have been able to charge and arrest Mr. Bankman-Fried and charge (and obtain
guilty pleas from) Ms. Ellison and Mr. Wang. ​
The lawyers then quickly launched a campaign to blame Bankman-Fried for the bankruptcy they caused:
36

FTX was in the control of a small group of inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals. And
unfortunately, the evidence seems to indicate that some or all of them were also compromised
individuals. . . . [FTX] was run, effectively, as a personal fiefdom of Sam Bankman-Fried.
[I]t is hard to think of a CEO in recent memory who has been more focused on trashing the
previous management . . . [Ray] has spent a lot of his time publishing gleeful reports about
how bad everything at FTX is and how incompetent and criminal its former managers, led by
former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, were. . . . [T]hey are in a little bit of tension with Ray’s main
job of maximizing recoveries.

​​Early statements and trial
​
Lawyers took over FTX, and instead of paying everyone back in kind in 2022 and keeping a valuable company
for investors, the Debtors shut down the company and did not pay any money back for the first two years of
bankruptcy proceedings. Meanwhile they worked with prosecutors at the SDNY to indict Bankman-Fried.
Ray’s pronouncements during this period repeatedly failed to reflect reality, and the prosecution’s
pronouncements at Bankman-Fried’s trial mimicked them. For instance, in summation, the prosecution said:
They are negative 2.7 billion at this point in late 2021 . . . [Bankman-Fried] sees that they've got
more loans than assets, he sees they're in the red.
37

37
United States v. Bankman-Fried 1:22-cr-00673, Tr. 2956-2957, based on GX-36
36
S&C’s James Bromley at the First Day Hearing, attended by 500+ people, FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc
142 (11/22/22), pp. 14, 28; Matt Levine, https://bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-04-10/ftx-lost-track-of-its-money
35
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 510, p. 5; Doc 509, p. 3; the lawyers were likewise incentivized to assist
the prosecution—in Ray’s words, “Crime is very expensive. You know, a lot of people get hurt. And it’s very expensive to
fix it, right?” https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-this-the-worst-job-in-corporate-america-or-maybe-the-best
9

10. In fact, in late 2021, Alameda had over $100 billion of assets versus $20 billion of liabilities—it had a raw net
asset value of +$45 billion, plus an additional $29 billion in associated assets and $32 billion in equity value.
Alameda had $20 billion of assets sitting on FTX alone. The claim that “they’ve got more loans than assets” is
false, and was based on a spreadsheet that looked only at a subset of Alameda’s loans and assets.
38

The prosecution also said that, in June 2022:
It was 10 billion plus in the hole . . . so they​
are deeply in the red, totally under water.
39

​
At the time, Alameda had $25 billion of assets versus $11 billion of liabilities—for a net value of +$14 billion,
plus an additional $13 billion in FTX equity. The prosecution simply highlighted liabilities and ignored assets.
In September 2022, two months before it filed for bankruptcy:
[Bankman-Fried] Knows He Took $14 Billion . . . Alameda can’t shut down because of hole [sic] .
. . [They] had no way to repay it
40

The truth is basically the same as June. $23 billion of assets, $12 billion of liabilities, and an additional $16
billion of FTX equity.
This trend continues in November 2022, during the liquidity crisis. FTX “only had $4 billion to cover $12
billion of client holdings”:
41

Again, the prosecution ignored the bulk of the assets, concentrating instead on the liabilities.
42

42
United States v. Bankman-Fried 1:22-cr-00673, GX-21
41
United States v. Bankman-Fried 1:22-cr-00673, Government summation slide 170; Bankman-Fried was prohibited from
introducing evidence at trial that FTX was solvent at this time (United States v. Bankman-Fried 24-961 (2d Cir.), Doc 28)
40
United States v. Bankman-Fried 1:22-cr-00673, Government summation slides 154, 134
39
United States v. Bankman-Fried 1:22-cr-00673, Tr. 2978
38
United States v. Bankman-Fried 1:22-cr-00673, GX-36
10

11. This continued into the bankruptcy proceedings. The Debtors announced that the estate was “hopelessly
insolvent” and a “dumpster fire” with massive “shortfalls” at both FTX and FTX US.
43
They initially announced
only $1 billion in assets at FTX—a small fraction of the real total.
44

One ingredient that led them to misstate FTX’s balance sheet was that, one week after taking over the
company, Ray announced that he was not going to consider any of FTX’s books and records (while confidently
pronouncing its insolvency to Congress
45
). In his First Day Filing in November 2022, Ray acknowledged that
the companies’ latest balance sheets showed over $19 billion in total assets, but dismissed them because
they were “produced while the Debtors were controlled by Mr. Bankman-Fried.”
46

As we’ve seen, the Debtors’ January 2023 presentation to creditors listed around $15 billion in assets as of the
Petition Date.
47
According to the Debtors’ latest records, FTX owed its customers $8.4 billion.
48

But instead of announcing the real headline—that FTX was solvent when they filed for bankruptcy—the
Debtors’ press release proclaimed: “Confirmed Material Shortfalls at Both International and US Exchanges.”
49

FTX US, for example, had a “shortfall” because they had only located $181 million of digital assets:
50

​
​
Yet the same presentation showed $428 million in FTX US’s bank account, plus more in crypto wallets.
51


51
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 507-1 (1/17/23), p. 8; their presentation two months later claimed
$219m of total assets for FTX US (for more on this, see https://sambf.substack.com/p/ftx-us-balance-update-2023-01-17)
50
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 507-1 (1/17/23), p. 5
49
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ftx-debtors-provide-additional-information-to-customers-and-other-
stakeholders-301723770.html (1/17/23)
48
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 32371, p. 15 (allowed secured, customer, and other general unsecured
claims total $8.4 billion in petition-date value)
47
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 507-1 (1/17/23)
46
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 24 (11/17/22)
45
“We've lost 8 billion dollars of customer money . . . We still have a hole in the US, so as we sit here today, it is not
solvent—that's just inaccurate” https://www.youtube.com/live/rWAnrigAO3I?t=8229s (12/13/22)
44
https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/12/20/ftx-has-over-1b-in-cash-creditor-meeting-told/
43
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 24 (11/17/22), Doc 507-1 (1/17/23), Doc 511 (1/17/23); United States v.
Bankman-Fried 1:22-cr-00673, Doc 414-3 (2/14/24)
11

12. As for the value of the estate’s venture portfolio, the Debtors urged customers to keep their expectations
low:
52


It took eighteen months for the Debtors’ public statements to catch up to reality:

​
Why the discrepancies? From the Attorney General of The Bahamas:
53

It is possible that the prospect of multimillion-dollar legal and consultancy fees is driving both
their legal strategy and their intemperate statements
From Freakonomics Radio host Stephen Dubner, interviewing Ray on Day 1 of Bankman-Fried’s trial:
54

One criticism I’ve heard of your being so public about how poorly the company was run, was
that the more chaotic and absurd you can make it sound, the more that it may be to your
benefit, to make your role seem even more heroic.
​
Ultimately, the Debtors and the prosecution misrepresented the data—falsely calling FTX “hopelessly
insolvent” with “more loans than assets”—until after Bankman-Fried had been convicted and sentenced.
54
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/is-this-the-worst-job-in-corporate-america-or-maybe-the-best/
53
https://nypost.com/2022/11/28/bahamas-shreds-ftx-ceo-john-ray-extremely-regrettable-accusations
52
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 507-1 (1/17/23), p. 14
12

13. Draining The Estate: A Breakdown
​
If Ray had done nothing during his stewardship of FTX other than delaying payments until 2025, customers
would be getting repaid in full, in kind, with $111 billion left over for investors. Instead, customers are getting
repaid dollarized claims in 2025 and equity investors are getting back around 10% of what they put in.
Below is an accounting of that difference.
To begin with, Ray shut down the company. FTX was making $3 million per day and $1 billion per year when
it was shut down.
55
The most recent raise had valued it at $40 billion, and during the liquidity crisis, FTX
found deals representing $6-8 billion worth of liquidity backed by its equity on short notice.
56

When the lawyers wrested control of FTX, however, they deemed it a worthless “dumpster fire”
57
and
immediately shut it down. While Ray initially committed to potentially rebooting the exchange,
58
he
ultimately decided neither to sell the company nor to restart it, despite objections from other stakeholders,
including the Joint Provisional Liquidators (appointed by the Bahamian regulators):
59

In the four short months since executing the Cooperation Agreement, the U.S. Debtors have
somehow managed to breach every single commitment they made
That accounts for roughly $66 billion of lost value for investors under today’s market conditions.
Similarly, it would bode poorly for FTT, a token whose value was tied to FTX. Going into the liquidity crisis,
the estate and its stakeholders owned approximately $7 billion worth of FTT; today, those tokens would be
worth an estimated $22 billion. And even after the Debtors deemed the estate a “dumpster fire” and
disassembled the company, FTT retains a market cap above $300 million.
60
But Ray decided that FTT was
“worthless” on behalf of the estate and its customer stakeholders, and chose to discard the asset entirely
rather than give it back to customers.
61
These two decisions cost FTX’s stakeholders around $22 billion. The Debtors also sold the estate’s investments for below market prices.
For instance, they sold the estate’s stake in Sui for just under $100 million; shortly thereafter, the token
debuted on markets valuing FTX’s former stake at $1 billion.
62
Today, that stake would be worth $2.9 billion.
The investment in Anthropic—which Ray called “just a bunch of people with an idea. Nothing”
63
—was sold by
the estate for $0.9 billion profit. That is significant, but far less than its real value. The estate owned nearly
8% of a company now valued at $183 billion; the stake would now be worth almost $14.3 billion.
63
Michael Lewis, Going Infinite (2023), p. 240
62
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/11/business/dealbook/ftx-sam-bankman-fried.html
61
Kihyuk Nam, Appellant, v. FTX Trading Ltd., et al., Appellees 1:24-cv-01175-CFC (1/10/25)
60
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ftx-token (9/30/25)
59
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 1480 (5/12/23), p. 4
58
https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/the-crypto-reboot-that-wasnt-why-ftx-2-0-floundered-5e729c4c
57
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 511 (1/17/23)
56
United States v. Bankman-Fried 1:22-cr-00673, Doc 407-34, p. 34 (Tron), p. 42 (Tron, post-bankruptcy), p. 45 (Nomura)
55
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/20/ftx-grew-revenue-1000percent-during-the-crypto-craze-leaked-financials.html
13

14. The company had roughly 58 million Solana tokens, today worth $12.4 billion. (It had invested roughly $200
million to purchase those tokens initially.) The estate sold them for around $3.3 billion. Almost half were
sold to an insider consulting for the estate, for less than half their market price at the time.
64

The company’s stake in Robinhood—much discussed and denigrated by the estate—was sold at a loss for just
over $600 million. It would be worth roughly $7.6 billion today.
There are more examples, but the lack of transparency around many of the estate’s transactions makes it
difficult to judge them individually. Given the performance of Alameda’s largest investments,
65
it is not
unreasonable to assume that billions more in gains from other assets have been squandered by the Debtors.
In addition to fire sales to insiders, the lawyers have dissipated assets directly for their own benefit. S&C has
directed payments of nearly $250 million to itself for its work as a consultant to the estate, and approved the
payments as counsel to the estate.
66
Over the course of the bankruptcy, the estate has paid out $948 million
to consultants so far, with another $449 million put aside for future work.
67
Indeed, there is evidence that this
was a motivating factor behind S&C commandeering the company and bankrupting it to begin with.
68

That’s over $120 billion of lost value so far. $120 billion that would
have gone to FTX’s stakeholders if the Debtors had simply done
nothing at all. Instead, the Debtors reported assets of around $13
billion in their February 2024 letter (as noted above, these assets
would continue increasing, to roughly $18 billion today):
69
However, even accounting for this large
dissipation of value, the Debtors’ frequent claim
that FTX was “hopelessly insolvent”—reiterated
in this very February 2024 letter—appeared false.
Their calculations suggested liabilities of $11.3
billion, meaning there still remained sufficient
value to repay all customers in full and give
substantial value to equity holders on top:
69

Indeed, a group of investors was “requesting that the U.S. Trustee form an official committee to represent
FTX.com Preferred Equity Holders” to get themselves the remaining assets.
70
In early 2024, the Debtors put a stop to that possibility. To begin with, to compensate for failing to pay back
customers in kind, they added 9% annual postpetition interest. But even after that, FTX remained solvent, so
they went to work on the liabilities side of the balance sheet.
70
United States v. Bankman-Fried 1:22-cr-00673, Doc 414-3 (2/14/24); see also Doc 414-2 (2/28/24)
69
United States v. Bankman-Fried 1:22-cr-00673, Doc 414-3 (2/14/24)
68
FTX Trading Ltd. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del.) Doc 530 (1/19/23) (sworn declaration of Dan Friedberg)
67
https://x.com/MrPurple_DJ/status/1894906072915464334
66
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/ftxs-950-million-bankruptcy-fees-among-costliest-since-lehman
65
And some of its smaller investments—e.g., the estate sold its $200,000 investment in Anysphere (developer of Cursor)
at cost; that investment would reportedly be worth around $500,000,000 today
64
https://x.com/sunil_trades/status/1895766905098473774
14

15. The Debtors declared that, before paying back
customers in kind, and before giving any value to
FTX’s investors, they would first dedicate $17
billion to Government claims:
71

“Because these Debtors are ‘hopelessly insolvent,’
appointing an Equity Committee is ‘unjustified’,”
the lawyers claimed. “The Debtors project that
they will have, at most, $13.7 billion in projected
assets to pay $31.4 billion in projected claims.”
71
All of the above—shutting down the company,
discarding FTT, the fire sales of assets, over a
billion in payments to themselves, billions in
interest payments and, finally, $17 billion in
Government payments—were necessary in order
to justify the Debtors’ self-fulfilling prophecy that
FTX was “hopelessly insolvent.”​
​
Over a period of 18 months, the Debtors’ public announcements of $1 billion, $5 billion, $7 billion, and then
$13 billion of assets converged towards the $15 billion they’d discovered just two months into the
bankruptcy. But that was $15 billion as of the petition date, when the assets were at their lowest point.
Today, those assets together with the FTX equity held by Alameda would be worth approximately $136 billion
—if the Debtors hadn’t decimated the company.​

Breakdown of estimated losses by the Debtors
The gap between what the estate is, and what it would have been (at minimum)
Asset/expense Lost value
Anthropic $12.9 billion
Robinhood $7.0 billion
Solana $9.1 billion
Sui $2.8 billion
FTT $21.9 billion
Equity $66.4 billion
Legal/consultancy fees $1.4 billion
Government $16.9 billion
Total $138+ billion of mismanagement

71
United States v. Bankman-Fried 1:22-cr-00673, Doc 414-3 (2/14/24), pp. 3-4
15