FTX chief Sam Bankman-Fried has lashed out at the troubled crypto lender after its lawyers rejected the buyout offer. He said Voyager still has 75% of its assets and questioned why hasn’t the company returned any of the funds to its clients yet. He also went on to speculate that the lawyers may want to churn more money out of customer pockets by dragging out the bankruptcy process.
SBF’s Accusation
According to SBF, the existing funds should be returned to the customers before paying back the assets (if any) recovered from Three Arrows Capital. However, the exec, in a series of tweets, asserted that several bankruptcy agents are slowly “bleeding the customer’s frozen assets dry with consulting fees.”
SBF said it is the customers that end up losing in a “traditional” process before getting their assets back due to the long, drawn-out process during which the funds remain frozen.
“See, if a customer had 1 BTC on the platform, and BTC was worth $30k… and then it takes years to go through bankruptcy… what do they get back? 1 BTC, or $30k? Probably, whichever is worth less. So the longer the process drags out, the more optionality customers lose.”
He also explained that lots of third parties were trying to bid $0.10 on the dollar for the assets.
“If a customer had $100 on the platform, a third party would pay $10 for it, get whatever funds remained (maybe $75), and then the customer… gets back $10.”
With the bankruptcy process getting “dragged on,” the clients will have to keep paying the Voyager consultants additional charges from their pockets. SBF said the proposed bailout deal made by FTX, FTX US, and Alameda collectively was to ensure that the customers do not end up losing any more funds.
The CEO believes the offer would allow customers “get the remaining assets back right away,” with no fees or additional haircuts. He stated that the affected users have “been through enough already” and should be able to claim their assets sooner because bankruptcy proceedings can take years. Voyager, however, disagrees.
Voyager Declines Offer
In fact, Voyager has used some strong words against the buyout offer. As per the letter filed in court on July 24th, the lawyers representing the lender said that the deal offered by the three companies tied to FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried “openly disparaged Voyager” and had “misleading and outrightly false” assertions.
It also stated that Alameda and FTX violated many obligations to the Debtors and the Bankruptcy Court by publicly posting the press release of the proposal and added that the process might harm customers even more.
