Bankrupt crypto lender Voyager seals Fed deal for $1 billion Binance US acquisition
Voyager Digital Holdings has reportedly reached an agreement with the US federal government to proceed with a $1 billion plan to sell its assets to the US arm of crypto exchange Binance.
The news was shared by the Voyager Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors (UCC) on Wednesday.
“Voyager, UCC and the government reached a resolution that will allow the plan to move forward and take effect soon,” UCC said in a Twitter thread.
According to the committee, “the resolution is embodied in a joint provision that provides that the appeals will proceed with respect to the plan’s exemption provision,” with the government agreeing that the Binance.US acquisition of Voyager’s assets “can proceed without such a provision and would not otherwise be subject to the stay.”
The committee added that it, along with Voyager, seeks to help Binance.US “move forward as quickly as possible once this provision is approved by the district court.”
Decrypt has reached out to Binance.US for comment and will update this article if we hear back.
Voyager’s difficult path to compensating investors
The approval comes three weeks after the US District Court for the Southern District of New York temporarily halted a previously reached agreement that would have seen Binance.US pay $20 million in cash to Voyager, and take on crypto assets deposited by the firm’s clients.
Voyager filed for bankruptcy last July after disclosing significant exposure to failed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and has been actively working on a plan to redistribute funds to its investors since then.
The firm entered into an agreement with FTX for the exchange to buy its distressed assets in September 2022, but the agreement was taken off the table after FTX declared bankruptcy on its own, and its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, was charged with several financial matters. crimes.
In December 2022, after the alleged deal with FTX fell through, Voyager revealed that Binance.US had made the highest and best offer for its distressed assets, with the approximate value of the deal at $1.022 billion.
A February lawsuit showed that 97% of Voyager’s 61,300 account holders supported the deal with Binance.US, but regulators, including the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), have raised concerns about the deal.
The SEC has launched an investigation into whether Voyager violated federal securities laws and failed to adequately explain how it will protect customers’ assets after the transfer to Binance.US. The FTC, meanwhile, has alleged that the agreement would unlawfully shield Voyager from liability for “actual fraud, willful misconduct or gross negligence.”
In a separate filing, the New York Department of Financial Services (NYFDS) said Voyager was onboarding customers in New York state and “thereby operating a virtual currency business in the state without a license.”
Aside from the above, Binance.US itself faces regulatory hurdles that could potentially affect the exchange’s ability to complete the deal.
