New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art has agreed to return the $550,000 donation it received from crypto exchange FTX before its November 2022 collapse.
Summary
FTX: failed crypto-exchange gets $550,000 donation back
According to reports, Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto-exchange, FTX, has obtained approval for a refund of the donation made prior to its bankruptcy.
Accepting such restitution was the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, for the sum of $550,000 received between March and May last year, exactly from FTX’s West Realm Shires Services.
Specifically, the court document reads the following:
“The Met wishes to return the Donations to the FTX Debtors, and the FTX Debtors and the Met have engaged in good faith, arm’s length negotiations concerning the return.”
This court-approved restitution appears to be paid within one month of the filing of this document.
FTX and the lawsuit against Sam Bankman-Fried by the crypto company
FTX was founded in 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried (or SBF) and Gary Wang, and ever since, SBF has been its CEO.
Of course, after the company went bankrupt, it found itself under different management. But that’s not the end of the story; indeed, recently, new lawyers allegedly sued co-founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried for acquiring the stock-clearing platform Embed.
Basically, FTX’s lawyers are accusing SBF of failing to conduct due diligence before acquiring Embed at the figure of $220 million.
And indeed, Embed apparently had no value and at the time of its sale there were 12 potential buyers, of which the highest proposal was $78 million.
The sale of FTX’s crypto service: LedgerX
In addition to charging FTX’s former CEO, the new administration is trying to recover as much money as possible.
To this end, in April, the sale of LedgerX, the futures and options crypto provider, to an affiliate of Miami International Holdings was announced.
The consideration for this sale was $50 million, a sum that will add to the pool of liquid assets that will sooner or later have to be returned to debtors.
Last January, it was the bankruptcy court that approved the sale of LedgerX and other FTX assets, only after a series of bureaucratic conditions were passed. Among them were Embed, LedgerX, FTX Japan, and FTX Europe.
The repayment to FTX’s European debtors
In April, European customers of FTX and its FTT token finally found out how they could gain access to a refund of their funds that had been lost along with the crypto-exchange.
In Italy, the securities regulator, Consob, had announced the launch of a website where users would be able to view the balances of their FTX accounts and request the return of what they were entitled to.
This is ftxeurope.eu, which has provided the same for all of Europe and not just Italy.
At least until 30 September 2023, FTX EU has been suspended from providing investment services, nor can it accept new clients or advertise itself as an investment service provider.
The FTT token
Since FTX’s collapse, the price of FTT has dropped from $25 to $0.90. At the time of writing FTT is worth $0.94.
The last week’s dump sees FTT dropping 8% from $1.026 to its current price. Not only that, looking at the monthly chart, FTT has lost 35% of its price, which was worth $1.50.
Despite everything, the failed crypto-exchange token still has a total market capitalization of $310 million. A figure that ranks FTT 216th in the overall crypto rankings.
Just below the token of the renowned crypto-exchange Bitget, BGB, which has a market capitalization that is twice as high.
