FTX to Start Paying Users in March 2025

FTX has announced that it is completing its restructuring process in early 2025, paving the way for it to begin paying out to affected investors.

In an announcement released early on November 22, the entity taking over the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX set a deadline of March 2025 to begin the process of returning assets to customers.

The announcement comes exactly two years after FTX declared bankruptcy in November 2022 after revealing a large deficit in its books and having to take customer funds to cover it.

FTX’s expected timeline for user compensation is as follows:

- By early December, FTX will finalize agreements with global asset allocators to transfer funds back to customers, as well as provide instructions for users to set up accounts with these asset allocators, conduct KYC, and provide required verification information

- By the end of December, FTX will announce the compensation timeline for bankruptcy court approval.

- FTX expects the compensation plan to be officially approved in January 2025, with the customer refund phase to begin within 60 days of that, approximately March 2025.

John J. Ray III, interim CEO of FTX, said:

“We are excited to announce that the FTX asset restitution process will begin in early 2025. The timeline outlined above demonstrates the experience and professionalism of the FTX recovery team, who have recovered billions of dollars on behalf of creditors and users. While we are still working to collect additional funds, we are working to finalize agreements with asset allocators and return funds to users as soon as possible.”

The FTT token price briefly surged as much as 45% to $3 when FTX announced the expected asset restitution schedule, before falling back to $2.70 at press time.

The US court approved FTX's asset recovery plan in October, according to which 98% of creditors and users who suffered losses will receive up to 118% of the assets claimed for compensation. According to statistics as of May 2024, FTX has recovered up to 16.3 billion USD in assets. However, investors still suffer losses because the value of the assets compensated is calculated in USD at the time of FTX's bankruptcy in November 2022, instead of calculated according to the actual crypto price, which has grown many times over the past 2 years.

As reported, FTX has been taking continuous legal actions this November to increase the amount of assets recovered to serve the debt repayment plan approved by the court. After settling the lawsuit with Bybit for $228 million, the bankrupt entity that took over the platform continued to sue KuCoin, individuals and organizations that had relationships with FTX in the past, and most notably, Binance and former CEO Changpeng Zhao for up to $1.76 billion.