Bankrupt crypto firm Voyager sold to FTX for $1.4 billion
Voyager Digital will sell its assets to cryptocurrency exchange FTX for $1.4 billion, the struggling crypto lender announced late Monday (September 26).
The sale came “after several rounds of bidding in a highly competitive auction process that lasted two weeks,” according to a press release.
PYMNTS had reported that 22 parties had shown interest in buying Voyager, including crypto exchange Binance, which at one point had offered a slightly higher bid than FTX.
Voyager said FTX’s bid is based on the fair market value of all Voyager cryptocurrency “at a date to be determined in the future,” an estimated $1.3 billion at current prices, plus “additional consideration estimated to provide approximately $111 million dollars of incremental value.”
Voyager filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July, a week after suspending withdrawals and two weeks after receiving a $485 million bailout from FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s company Alameda Research.
Read more: Crypto Lender Voyager Goes to Bankruptcy Auction
FTX and Alameda had proposed to buy Voyager in July, but a lawyer for Voyager countered that the bid was a “low-ball bid dressed up as a white knight rescue” and would actually cost the company money in the long term.
See more: Alameda returns $200 million Voyager digital loan
Alameda also said it will return $200 million in cryptocurrency borrowed from the company. Court documents showed that Alameda would pay about 6,500 bitcoin and about 51,000 ether, and Voyager would return the collateral associated with the loan. Alameda had tweeted during the summer that it was “happy” to return the loan.
As PYMNTS reported, Voyager and its affiliates Voyager Digital and Voyager Digital Holdings voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 to restructure and “create a path” to resume operations and “return value to customers.”
At the time of the filing, Voyager had more than $650 million in claims against Three Arrows Capital, a Singapore-based crypto hedge fund, which is in liquidation. According to the press release, those claims remain “with the bankruptcy estate, which will distribute any available recovery on such claims to the estate’s creditors.”
The news comes just days after Voyager announced the resignation of CFO Ashwin Prithipaul, who stepped down “to pursue other opportunities,” according to a company press release last week. CEO Stephen Ehrlich will fill Prithipaul’s job until a replacement is named, Voyager said.
Read more: Bankrupt crypto lender Voyager’s CFO Ashwin Prithipaul resigns
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