FTX identifies ~$5.5B in “liquid” assets for recovery, including $415M in “unauthorized third-party transfers” possibly tied to a hack found after its collapse

- FTX has identified about $5.5 billion worth of digital assets for recovery, a number that includes $415 million in “hacked crypto.”

CNBC 2023-01-18 Rohan Goswami

Context & Ripple Effects

FTX’s $5.5 billion inventory is an early benchmark for a bankruptcy estate that later separated wallet-held assets from Alameda Research’s much larger net borrowing in a Chapter 11 asset-and-borrowing presentation. The $415 million classified as unauthorized transfers also connects the estate’s recovery work to the effort to contain the exchange’s post-collapse crypto heist.

Later coverage put customer claims at about $8.7 billion and reported a larger liquid-asset recovery, making this initial tally consequential not just for valuation but for the gap between recoveries and creditor losses.

First-order effects

FTX’s bankruptcy team gains a defined $5.5 billion pool of liquid digital assets to preserve and pursue for creditors, while treating the $415 million in unauthorized transfers as a separate recovery and tracing problem.
The suspected hack immediately complicates control of part of the estate: assets identified on paper are not necessarily assets available for distribution.

Second-order effects

The initial asset tally establishes a baseline against which creditors can assess later recovery claims, including the reported $8.7 billion in customer claims arising from commingled and misused deposits.
For FTX’s advisers, the missing-transfer component expands the work beyond account reconciliation into forensic tracing and potential recovery actions, adding to the operational burden of the Chapter 11 case.

Third-order effects

FTX’s case illustrates how a failed crypto intermediary can turn custody, treasury management, and incident response into bankruptcy-critical functions rather than routine exchange operations.
If similar failures continue to expose gaps between recorded balances and recoverable assets, customer and creditor trust will depend more heavily on verifiable asset segregation and transfer controls.

The trend: Crypto-exchange failures are making demonstrable custody controls and recoverable asset records central to the sector’s legitimacy and restructuring outcomes.

Discussion

@sbf_ftx @sbf_ftx on x
FTX US is solvent, as it always as been. https://sambf.substack.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@spreekaway @spreekaway on x
Quick question to my “FTX US is solvent” bros, what do you call it when you have substantially less assets than aggregate customer balances and then you lose 50% of your assets after that? https://twitter.com/...
@jconorgrogan Conor on x
FTX owns 99.69% of all OXY, 99%+ of all SRM, and 98.7% of all MAPS https://twitter.com/...
@leomschwartz Leo Schwartz on x
In a new report, FTX lays out the $5.5 billion in liquid assets the company has recovered so far: - $1.7 billion of cash - $3.5 billion of liquid cryptocurrency and FTT tokens - $0.3 billion of liquid securities
@b1ockgreg Greg on x
Yikes! Per today's filing, FTX's Solana position reflects ~11% of the market capitalization as of Petition Date pricing... https://twitter.com/...
@crymeacoin @crymeacoin on x
funniest thing about the last cycle is finding out what trash these supposed gigabrain institutions own after they all go bankrupt https://twitter.com/...
@epsilontheory Ben Hunt on x
I asked @BrettHarrison88 this after his 48-tweet I Blame Sam™️ thread, but he refused. Maybe @SBF_FTX? a) who is the $71m related party AR? b) was the $250m BlockFi draw from FTX US remitted in FTT? c) can you provide any color or breakdown of the $429m in non-current assets? htt…
@stephanie_murr Stephanie Murray on x
Here's a snapshot of FTX's real estate empire in the Bahamas, from the presentation FTX debtors showed the creditors committee today Looks like 36 properties worth $253 million 💸 (You can download the whole presentation off the Kroll docket https://restructuring.ra.kroll.com/ ...…
@sbf_ftx @sbf_ftx on x
TL;DR: 1) S&C files, claiming FTX US is insolvent 2) S&C forgot to include bank balances, ~$428m 3) Once you add those back in, you get in the neighborhood of my prior balance sheet (~+$350m) 4) Other slides in the same filing demonstrate (2)
@leomschwartz Leo Schwartz on x
A breakdown of what FTX has deemed “illiquid tokens,” including my personal favorite easter egg from the infamous SBF balance sheet, TRUMPLOSE https://www.bloomberg.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@ftx_official @ftx_official on x
Sharing the FTX Debtors' press release just issued: https://www.prnewswire.com/...
@edzitron Ed Zitron on x
i feel like ‘liquid cryptocurrency’ and ‘ftt tokens’ are not exactly things i'd have grouped together (guessing this isn't Leo's evaluation but those laid out by the report) https://twitter.com/...
@0xfungy @0xfungy on x
3ac vibes https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@sbf_ftx @sbf_ftx on x
@jconorgrogan I'm fairly confident that FTX US's excess cash on hand is much larger than the size of the wrapped asset issue to the extent there is one
@metalawman @metalawman on x
So here is SBF's counter to the press release and the presentation that S&C gave to the creditors committee. Let us stipulate that SBF is a little short on credibility, but as I read it, his analysis of the solvency of FTX US cannot be immediately dismissed. https://twitter.com/.…
@growing_daniel Daniel on x
I love that he sticks to the bit no matter what. True poster https://twitter.com/...
@kadhim @kadhim on x
The biggest chunk is $3.5bn of crypto, primarily two tokens historically linked to Sam Bankman-Fried: Solana and FTT (the FTX native token) They don't exactly know the makeup of $1.3bn of the referenced crypto (the big bar on the right). https://twitter.com/...
@fed_speak @fed_speak on x
If an intern brought me an Excel file formatted like this I would literally fire them on the spot. https://twitter.com/...
@smtuffy Sean Tuffy on x
The thing is, even if FTX US was solvent (which it's not) it wouldn't get SBF out of facing US prosecution for all the crimes. I mean, no matter where you are - if you touch a US dollar you're, more or less, in the US's jurisdiction if you do fraud,
@blakestonks Blake on x
SBF saying FTX is solvent by typing random shit into a Microsoft Excel sheet. Can't make this up. https://twitter.com/...
@cryptogodjohn Johnny on x
FTX debtors currently have $685 million worth of $SOL to dump on us Yay https://twitter.com/...
@sbf_ftx @sbf_ftx on x
@jconorgrogan @austerity_sucks I think FTX US was always solvent, with segregated assets from FTX International this wasn't a last-minute musical chairs thing to be clear if Alameda had excess assets (+ve NAV) on FTX US at the end, *those* would likely go to FTX intl but wouldn't…
@longshorttrader @longshorttrader on x
He's a far worse criminal Shkreli, but his antics sorta remind of shkreli's antics before he was imprisoned. Remember Shkreli's YouTube sessions? Teaching DCFs? https://twitter.com/...
@smtuffy Sean Tuffy on x
Anyway, this all probably more misdirection by SBF. So, ask yourself why he wants to keep the focus on FTX US and where we should be looking instead
@kadhim @kadhim on x
FTX also says it's reviewing the $2.1bn buyout of Binance's stake in the company in 2021 👀 https://twitter.com/...
@metalawman @metalawman on x
FTX issues press release. There are “shortfalls” in the 2 primary exchanges because assets are “substantially less than” the customer account balances on the ledgers. They discuss the assets in detail but withhold the most critical number—the total aggregate customer balances. ht…
@kadhim @kadhim on x
Last week, FTX's lawyers referenced the $5bn+ of assets they had found as separate to another chunk held in the Bahamas, which they said “contains large amount of FTT and is highly volatile”. https://twitter.com/... Now we discover (as above) that about 10% of $5bn+ is FTT...
@ajammirabilis Amanda Jean on x
💀 accounting tips from SBF. Which formula is this? https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@sindap Sujeet Indap on x
S&C: we are truly independent because we continue to sell out SBF to the Feds: https://twitter.com/...
@jconorgrogan Conor on x
FTX owns like 80%+ of the FTT float and the liquidators classify it as part of their “liquid” holdings https://twitter.com/...
@compound248 @compound248 on x
2. Alameda (Sam's personal accounts) had over $260 million in crypto assets at 3rd party brokerages. https://twitter.com/...
@buccocapital @buccocapital on x
Can't even spell correctly. Still counting his cumcoins as real money. Spreadsheet looking like it belongs to a 5th grade lemonade stand. Sad https://twitter.com/...
@sindap Sujeet Indap on x
FTX, in new filing, rejects SBF claim that he was railroaded into giving up control of company: https://twitter.com/...
@john_j_brown John Brown on x
SBF in a nutshell: “FTX would be solvent, if it was not for the unfair and unlucky circumstance of it being insolvent.”
@joeconsorti @joeconsorti on x
SBF posting an Excel screenshot as incontrovertible proof of solvency 🤣 Make no mistake... this is the extent of every “crypto” exchange's proof of reserves. No verifiability, just tRuSt mE bRo. Run for the hills. https://twitter.com/...
@autismcapital @autismcapital on x
New Sam alert. https://twitter.com/...
@ariehkovler Arieh Kovler on x
I have questions. 1. This slide shows $529M of FTT token held by FTX/Almeda. But the total market cap of FTT is about $750M. So how much of that theoretical money is realisable? https://twitter.com/...
@alistairmilne Alistair Milne on x
Narrator: if it received significant inflows from non-US FTX just before bankrupcy, then it probably wasn't and isn't https://twitter.com/...
@leomschwartz Leo Schwartz on x
A handy chart for where FTX found the $3.5 billion in cryptocurrency assets: https://twitter.com/...
@sbf_ftx @sbf_ftx on x
@fed_speak yeah sorry about that I had like 1 hour to throw this one together and it's ugly af but also it's right
@celsiusloans @celsiusloans on x
Celsius handling its numbers on QuickBooks? SBF: hold my accounting book! https://twitter.com/...
@kadhim @kadhim on x
Unclear why this would be in a bucket of “liquid” assets: https://twitter.com/...
@fejau_inc @fejau_inc on x
now that they've pumped soylana, FTX creditors can dump the token at 3x the price effective autism https://twitter.com/...
@tier10k @tier10k on x
Alameda's FTX account details Liquidating = False Negative balance limit = $65 billion 😭 https://twitter.com/...
@bitfinexed @bitfinexed on x
FTX was “hacked” for over $400 million dollars of shitcoin, the “hacker” had access to FTX and waited for the bankruptcy to spring into action, instead of just stealing even more money earlier... Bridges for sale! I have bridges for sale! Greatest investments! Anyone?
@frances_coppola Frances ‘Cassandra’ Coppola on x
Crypto bros don't know what “insolvent” means, exhibit no. 9856 https://twitter.com/...
@thecryptomonk @thecryptomonk on x
My brother in insolvency, wtf is this made up shit-tier excell spreadsheet? https://twitter.com/...
@kaz_khadem Kaz Khadem on x
This dude should be imprisoned for his disgusting excel formatting alone smh https://twitter.com/...
@spreekaway @spreekaway on x
FTX Debtor Statement: Total of approximately $5.5 billion of liquid assets have been identified, comprised of $1.7 billion of cash, $3.5 billion of crypto assets and $0.3 billion of securities FTX . com silo: $1.27b digital assets FTX. us: $91m digital assets
@bitboy_crypto Ben Armstrong on x
Today I spoke with someone very connected to the inside of the FTX Scandal and how it relates to upcoming hearings. All I can tell you from that convo is: A) SEC is getting held accountable. Goodbye Gary. B) There is another level to this story that NO ONE knows about publicly
@kadhim @kadhim on x
Wow. Here's the code that allowed SBF's hedge fund Alameda to borrow effectively unlimited amounts from FTX: https://restructuring.ra.kroll.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
@tradermayne Mayne on x
What about the other two companies you sunk you fucking doorknob. https://twitter.com/...
@pythianism Vance Spencer on x
Here is where we are Today FTX has $90M (~60K) of ETH My best guess from on-chain analytics is they owed users ~2M ETH from their deposits Do you see what I am getting at? What do other on-chain sleuths think? https://twitter.com/...
@trungtphan Trung Phan on x
Ran SBF numbers in Excel and got this https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@mattmedved Medved on x
same energy https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@compound248 @compound248 on x
SBF might make the worst-looking and least-intuitive spreadsheets of any 30-year old career finance guy I've ever seen. Awful.👀 Oh, he also claims Sullivan & Cromwell (lawyers) accidentally (or not!) leaves hundreds of millions of $ in cash out of the FTX US bk estate calc.💰👇 htt…
@davidgerard @davidgerard on x
new https://mycrimes.blog/ just dropped https://sambf.substack.com/...
@leomschwartz Leo Schwartz on x
A breakdown of FTX property in the Bahamas, ostensibly proving once and for all that the infamous SBF penthouse at Albany belonged to FTX (and it looks like they had units in all of the ostentatious buildings, including one ironically named Gemini) https://twitter.com/...
@teddyschleifer Teddy Schleifer on x
Sam Bankman-Fried is back on Substack with a new post punching at Sullivan + Cromwell. https://sambf.substack.com/...
@kadhim @kadhim on x
At a hearing last week, FTX lawyers said they had found over $5bn in liquid assets. Now they've disclosed what those assets are: https://restructuring.ra.kroll.com/ ... https://twitter.com/...
@ariehkovler Arieh Kovler on x
2. FTT was below $1 two weeks ago. It peaked at $2.60 yesterday. Other cryptos are also sharply up. I wonder how that slide would have looked a week or two ago?
@caitlinlong_ Caitlin Long on x
STAGGERING. Corrupt. Guess who's not on this list? Any #Wyoming U.S. senators or our Congresswoman. Think that's an accident? Nope. Wyoming stands for clarity of property rights & SOLVENT digital asset companies. FTX would have been laughed out of here. https://www.coindesk.com/.…
@watcherguru @watcherguru on x
JUST IN: One in three US Congress members received campaign donations from Sam Bankman-Fried or other FTX executives, CoinDesk reports.
@jeffreyatucker Jeffrey A Tucker on x
It's WAY worse than we were told. They were PAID to look the other way about lockdowns and mandates. https://www.coindesk.com/...
@amitoj Amitoj Singh on x
Following the @FTX money all the way were my incredible colleagues @jesseahamilton @cheyenneligon and @LizKNapolitano “CoinDesk reached out to all 196 lawmakers to ask what they would do with the money.” https://www.coindesk.com/...
@caitlinlong_ @caitlinlong_ on x
And Washington, D.C. rolled out the red carpet for FTX, which bought & paid for stunning access to the very top of power in the U.S., while D.C. is still blocking #Wyoming's SOLVENT digital asset companies. The world is upside down.
@nikhileshde @nikhileshde on x
Nearly 200 of the 535 lawmakers in Congress received money from senior FTX employees. Excellent reporting by @jesseahamilton @cheyenneligon @LizKNapolitano https://www.coindesk.com/...
@jesseahamilton Jesse Hamilton on x
Want to know whether a lawmaker is among the one in three members of Congress to take money from a top @FTX_Official executive before the company's collapse? We've got the full list embedded in this piece. https://www.coindesk.com/... via @coindesk
@janemayernyer Jane Mayer on x
Effective altruism? 1 in 3 Members of US Congress Took Political Donations From FTX https://thechainsaw.com/...
@jeffnolan Jeff Nolan on x
return the stolen money https://twitter.com/...
@iamroboneill @iamroboneill on x
SBF donated equally to the Democrat & Republican parties but hid gop donations to maintain an image (As many big donors do, the whole thing is bought. There's only 1 party & both wings of it are fucking you) https://twitter.com/...
@unusual_whales @unusual_whales on x
BREAKING: One in every three of the 535 senators and representatives in the current U.S. Congress have received campaign support from one of the senior executives of FTX.
@smtuffy Sean Tuffy on x
Yet, somehow, Brett was apparently blissfully unaware of any issues. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@aftxcreditor @aftxcreditor on x
Dear CC-1, thanks for not blowing the whistle in 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@metalawman @metalawman on x
Fascinating @nytimes article just out. Revelations from gov documents given to the Times. U.S. prosecutors lobbied the Bahamas to arrest SBF because they said he was an imminent flight risk. Then, when he got to the US, prosecutors immediately agreed to release him on bail. https…
@saint_pump @saint_pump on x
“Around that time, the documents say, the software developer known as CC-1 told the other software developer, labeled CC-2, that Alameda had borrowed approximately $13 billion from FTX.” Mother of christ https://www.nytimes.com/...
@qtmoses @qtmoses on x
bruh, wtf https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@tier10k @tier10k on x
[X] met with SBF to express concern about FTX losing customer funds Sam acknowledged the situation was causing him concern, resulting in being ‘5-10% less productive’ “The situation could correct itself if they raised more equity, and prices went up” https://www.nytimes.com/...
@coinbureau @coinbureau on x
Don't you just hate it when your multi-billion fraud makes you less productive? https://twitter.com/...
@coinbureau @coinbureau on x
Great to see that the NYT has finally changed their tune on the FTX-SBF fraud https://www.nytimes.com/...
@ldrogen Leigh Drogen on x
Backs up my thesis that there were likely a number of people/funds/firms that knew FTX was fraudulent and likely insolvent but it's MAD for everyone in crypto so no one blew the whistle https://twitter.com/...
@silvermanjacob Jacob Silverman on x
“Bankman-Fried acknowledged that the situation was causing him concern, resulting in Bankman-Fried being ‘5-10 percent less productive,’” the documents show. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@eliotwb Eliot Brown on x
“Bankman-Fried indicated that the situation could correct itself if they raised more equity, and cryptocurrency prices went up.” Oh. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@tier10k @tier10k on x
Around the same time, FTX was undergoing an audit, and the Alameda exec asked SBF whether the auditors would raise any concerns about Alameda's use of customer funds. “Bankman-Fried responded that auditors did not typically focus on such issues” https://twitter.com/...
@jemimajoanna Jemima Kelly on x
“Mr. Bankman-Fried explained to the colleague that the ‘situation was causing him concern,’ the documents show, and that it was hurting his productivity.” https://www.nytimes.com/...
@joshkraushaar Josh Kraushaar on x
“Sam Bankman-Fried told a colleague that his concern over his company's finances was hurting his productivity, according to government documents.” https://www.nytimes.com/...
@michaelpsenger Michael P Senger on x
One in three members of Congress took campaign money from Sam Bankman-Fried's fraudulent cryptocurrency empire at FTX. FTX was heavily involved in financing public health, especially planning for “pandemic preparedness.” https://www.coindesk.com/...
@grdecter @grdecter on x
BREAKING: An FTX Executive met with Sam Bankman-Fried and warned him that Alameda was trading and losing customer funds weeks before the firm collapsed, according to the New York Times
@jason_kint Jason Kint on x
👀 “The executive raised the issue with Mr. Bankman-Fried, who responded that ‘it was okay,’ the documents say, because the money Alameda had borrowed was backed by FTT, a cryptocurrency that FTX had invented.” https://www.nytimes.com/...
@fordm Matt Ford on x
“Hey, uh, we seem to have a massive off-books liability on our magic bean exchange?” “Not to worry, it's backed by other magic beans that we ourselves created.” https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/...

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