Will FTX’s customers be repaid?
As Sam Bankman-Fried is locked up, his erstwhile depositors await their fate
In the days after the fall of his crypto exchange, Sam Bankman-Fried opened a Google Doc and began to type. Beneath the title “probably bad ideas” he listed potential strategies, which included coming out as a Republican and arguing that “SBF died for our sins”. Mr Bankman-Fried ultimately decided against both, but there is one fiction he never let die. He has always claimed FTX was, in fact, solvent and could repay the $10.6bn it owed customers.
Mr Bankman-Fried lost his empire in November 2022, but it was not until March 28th that he learned his fate: 25 years in prison. FTX’s customers-turned-creditors are still waiting. The bankruptcy is messy, extending to over 100 entities with assets lawyers say are “hopelessly” mingled. So it was surprising to possibly everybody except Mr Bankman-Fried himself when FTX told a court in January that it should be able to repay its 36,000 customers in full.
This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline "The $10.6bn question"
More from Finance and economics
What campus protesters get wrong about divestment
Will withdrawing money hurt Israel?
Hedge funds make billions as India’s options market goes ballistic
The country’s retail investors are doing less well
Russia’s gas business will never recover from the war in Ukraine
Hopes of a Chinese rescue look increasingly vain