FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, began repaying creditors on February 18 at 10 a.m. Eastern Time, nearly three years after its failure.
A post from Sunil Kavara, a representative of the estate’s largest creditor group, reveals that the FTX will begin distributing payments to creditors this week for modest claims under $50,000.
A U.S. bankruptcy judge approved FTX’s reorganization repayment plan in October 2024. The exchange works with BitGo and Kraken to handle payouts, and creditors can choose to receive funds through stablecoins.
In this first round, FTX is paying out $800 million of the planned $1.2 billion. Overall, the company expects to return about $13 billion to creditors but is holding back some funds for disputed claims.
Kavara indicated that $400 million of the minor claims reimbursements will go to initial FTX customers, with the remainder going to claim purchasers. This initial set of payouts covers around 162,000 claims out of a total of 460,000 claimants, including users from the Bahamas.
Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) launched FTX in May 2019. It had become one of the major cryptocurrency exchanges, competing with Binance and Coinbase by 2021.
In late 2022, reports exposed problems in FTX’s finances, causing the exchange to collapse and file for bankruptcy. SBF was arrested in the Bahamas and later extradited to the U.S. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud but has argued that his trial was unfair. His parents have reportedly looked into getting a pardon from Donald Trump.
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