On Friday, Sam Bankman-Fried’s bankrupt buying and selling firm Alameda Analysis deposited over $30 million into Binance.
On condition that Bankman-Fried is at present serving a 25-year jail sentence for orchestrating fraudulent schemes at FTX associated to Alameda Analysis, the switch instantly raised questions on Alameda’s belongings.
Particularly why, if virtually all of those chapter property belongings are speculated to be returned to victims of Bankman-Fried’s schemes, does it have any cash left?
Sadly, the funds of FTX and its sister buying and selling firm have been a multitude for the reason that conglomerate filed for chapter in November 2022.
Consequently, determining how a lot cash FTX and Alameda Analysis nonetheless results in a little bit of a rabbit gap.
A chapter mess worse than Enron
John J. Ray III, who cleaned up the mess of Enron and different large bankruptcies like Nortel Networks, described the state of accounting at FTX as far worse.
Executives like Bankman-Fried saved unfastened and incomplete information about quite a few transfers between FTX, Alameda Analysis, affiliated corporations, and employees.
FTX as soon as held FTT tokens price over $20 billion, but it surely now holds lower than $250 million. Bankman-Fried additionally repeatedly borrowed from non-consenting FTX clients to fund Alameda Analysis’s trades.
For context, from a peak worth of over $64 billion, based on estimates by Arkham Intelligence, FTX’s wallets excluding Alameda at this time are price lower than $600 million.
Individually, Alameda Analysis’s crypto wallets maintain $1.2 billion price of digital belongings — most of which includes about $1 billion price of solana (SOL).
Nevertheless, Alameda’s massive SOL holdings usually are not the denomination of Friday’s curious switch.
As an alternative, a bitcoin (BTC) handle managed by Alameda and labeled “WBTC Merchant Deposit” obtained and instantly despatched 250 BTC price about $30 million to Binance.
Though the greenback quantity is substantial, actions from FTX and Alameda Analysis aren’t unusual. This yr alone, there have been dozens of transfers from FTX and Alameda Analysis wallets.
Two apparent explanations for Alameda Analysis transfers
Initially, FTX is actively making repayments to victims.
Certainly, this yr alone, billions of {dollars} price of repayments occurred in April, Might, and September, together with repayments to victims via exchanges like Kraken and Bitgo.
Per claimants’ directions, conversions via exchanges like Binance or elsewhere are wanted to pay USD equal quantities as of the chapter submitting date.
Importantly, recipients are positioned in numerous international locations all over the world, and Binance is usually the biggest change in lots of worldwide jurisdictions.
Secondly, the FTX chapter property is incurring substantial authorized charges. Conversion of digital belongings via exchanges are essential to make payouts to varied legal professionals and contractors helping with the chapter proceedings.
Publish-bankruptcy, the FTX chapter property has held greater than $16 billion price of belongings.
After substantial authorized charges, billions of {dollars} price of repayments to victims, and risky digital asset costs, Arkham Intelligence estimates $590 million price of crypto belongings held by FTX plus $1.2 billion by Alameda Analysis.
These digital asset holdings are along with money, actual property, fairness investments, and different belongings recovered by the chapter workforce.
