Binance.US says it is no longer interested in buying Voyager
If you’re one of the many thousands of customers of bankrupt crypto company Voyager Digital, you’ll have to wait even longer to see your locked-up funds as hopes for a Binance.US buyout has been crushed flat.
Voyager confirmed that Binance.US is closing its planned purchase deal of bankrupt cryptobroker Voyager’s $1.3 billion in assets in a tweet on Tuesday. The company said the decision was “disappointing”, but it still promised it would distribute customers’ cash during the ongoing bankruptcy. Meanwhile, Voyager’s Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors, the group of Voyager investors, was supposed to represent all people locked out of their money, claimed it would investigate “potential claims” against Binance.US.
The crypto broker Voyager disabled user trading and declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July last year. Voyager then sought an agreement with Binance.US which would have seen the exchange buy all of its assets, including Voyager’s beleaguered customers and assets valued at $1.3 billion, for about $1 billion. Binance.US CEO Brian Shroder previously promised that they would have returned users’ crypto on “the fastest timeline” once a deal was reached.
FOR SALE NOW
Two of our favorite VPNs
Protect your private data
We share and access tons of private data every day, which can cause big problems if that information gets into the wrong hands.
In a filing for bankruptcy dated April 25, Voyager owes a termination fee and the $10 million deposit originally set up by Binance.US. Still, Voyager’s creditors have previously claimed in court documents that if the deal did not go through, Voyager customers would lose about $100 million.
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao has previously made murmur of withdrawing from the agreement as late as the beginning of March. Although the purchase agreement cleared bureaucratic hurdles late last month, the judge handling the Voyager acquisition, U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rearden, set a hold on the deal citing the objections of federal and state financial watchdogs.
Securities and Exchange Commission along with financial regulators in New York objected to the planned acquisition, saying the deal traded in unregistered securities. Less than a week ago, the court allowed the bulk of the $1 billion settlement to move on while an appeal was being processed. Voyager lawyers had shared concerns that Binance.US would pull out of the deal after a 4-month deadline expired. The bankrupt firm appealed to the court to speed up the appeal process, although the court declined their request.
The company was just one of many crypto dominoes to fall last spring, leaving thousands upon thousands of customers without access to millions of dollars in funds holed up in these bankrupt exchanges and crypto firms. Binance.US, which still claims to be only a “partner” of the global Binance brand, is probably more concerned about its own problems, as it pending CFTC litigation in the middle fear of a full US criminal investigation.
This article is part of a development story. Our writers and editors will update this page as new information is released. Check back in a few minutes to see the latest updates. In the meantime, if you want more news coverage, check out ours tech, scienceor io9 the front pages. And you can always see the latest Gizmodo news on gizmodo.com/latest.
