FTX Japan Says Client Funds Withdrawal Possible Before 2022 Ends

Yes, there is still hope for clients of FTX Japan to pull their money out of the crypto exchange and be merry this Christmas.

Clients of the Japanese subsidiary of the collapsed FTX cryptocurrency exchange still have the chance to withdraw their funds before 2023 comes in.

This after executives of the Japan unit of the platform revealed that they are developing a new system that will allow them to resume withdrawal transactions even though its parent company’s computer system is down.

According to the officials, they believe that by the end of 2022, said system will be up and running which will allow their customers to move their assets out.

As of November 10, FTX Japan is said to be holding 20 billion Japanese Yen (equivalent to $138 million) in cash and deposits and it has not recorded any outgoing flow of funds as of this time.

Understanding The FTX Collapse

Things started to go south for the cryptocurrency trading venue that was once worth $32 billion when Binance announced its plans to liquidate all 23 million FTT tokens under its portfolio.

Then CEO Sam Bankman-Fried allayed the fears of their clients who were obviously shocked by the development and had already started withdrawing their assets from FTX. SBF initially assured business is fine but later revealed Binance was preparing to acquire his platform.

The plan, however, didn’t materialize as the leading exchange platform backed out of the deal after determining that FTX was already beyond their control and help.

Image: BTCC

Shortly after, it became apparent that users lost the ability to withdraw their funds as the company, which was obviously severely overwhelmed, halted all transactions.

On November 11, the already-imploded exchange went for a Chapter 11 Bankruptcy filing in hopes of salvaging its business to have a means to pay its creditors.

Negative criticisms about SBF and his wrecked empire sprouted like mushrooms on a rainy day when it was revealed few days after the bankruptcy filing that FTX corporate funds were used to buy houses in the Bahamas for some of its employees and advisors.

FTX Trading Debt Now More Than $3 billion

According to documents that were filed by the crypto exchange to a Delaware bankruptcy judge last Saturday, FTX now has at least $3.1 billion debt to its creditors.

Members of the company’s legal team submitted the list of the firm’s top 50 creditors that it only classified as “customers.” They were not named as apparently the exchange has failed to keep reliable books and records for its transactions.

A hearing for the bankruptcy filing is scheduled this Tuesday and FTX creditors are already growing anxious about what would come next in their quest to get back their funds that were locked after the exchange’s collapse.

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