Based on court filings last Friday, November 3, bankrupt crypto exchange FTX has filed to sell a $744 million master trust fund. The file shows that some of the assets come from crypto asset manager Grayscale and trust service provider Bitwise.
The assets under investigation consist of $691 million divided between five Grayscale Trust Funds and an additional $53 million under the management of Bitwise.
The main purpose of selling these "trust assets" is to facilitate the preparation of assets for distribution to future creditors and to give FTX the flexibility to sell assets at a time deemed appropriate.
The note also notes that the act of combining the sale into an equitable process will help reduce costs and streamline the sale procedure by avoiding the need to file a separate application for each proposed sale.
Creditors of FTX have applied for the sale of trust assets and sought approval from an investment adviser. Additionally, they have put forward a proposal to incorporate a pricing committee representing stakeholders as part of the sales process.
This latest request from FTX's creditors is based on previous court approval for the liquidation of crypto assets totaling approximately $3.4 billion. The court has ordered the sale of these assets in increments of $50 million and $100 million to avoid disruptive market sales.
On the other hand, last week, a US court sentenced Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, for defrauding lenders and customers. A tentative sentencing date has been scheduled for March 28, 2024, with legal analysts predicting a potential prison sentence of between 15 and 20 years, although the maximum possible sentence is 115 years.
