Nearly two years to the date of its bankruptcy filing, FTX’s estate is suing former ally and competitor Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao for $1.76 billion.
The FTX estate alleged that at least $1.76 billion in cryptocurrency was fraudulently transferred to Binance in July 2021 by FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried as a deal for FTX to repurchase Binance’s equity stake.
Binance had acquired a 20% equity stake in FTX in 2019. Time soured the relationship between the two crypto exchanges, however, and Zhao decided to offload his stake in FTX in mid-2021 “because of personal grievances he had against Bankman-Fried,” according to the lawsuit.
Now, the FTX estate wants to nix the deal and recover the funds to repay its creditors. Creditors lost more than $11 billion in the bankruptcy, but a recently accepted bankruptcy plan has them getting back 119% of what they lost, in part taking into account the ongoing boon in the crypto market.
In the lawsuit filed Sunday in Delaware, the FTX estate alleged that the equity repurchase agreement, which involved tokens native to both exchanges, was funded by FTX sister company Alameda Research, when it was already insolvent.
Though Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison told Bankman-Fried that it would be hard to fund the repurchase without taking funds from FTX customers, Bankman-Fried said it was “really important … to get [the deal] done.” This was likely due to his “desire to conceal his companies’ insolvency and send a false signal of strength to the market,” according to the estate.
After the deal was complete, Zhao “set out to destroy his now-unaffiliated competitor” in a period “marked by distrust and acrimony,” the lawsuit said.
This included, days before the bankruptcy filing, a series of “maliciously calculated” posts on social media site Twitter intended to “destroy his rival FTX, with reckless disregard to the harm that FTX’s customers and creditors would suffer,” FTX alleged.
Following the initial tweets, which according to FTX triggered its freefall, Zhao continued to tweet “to prevent FTX from seeking and obtaining alternative financing to cauterize the run on the institution by customers deceived by the tweets,” the estate alleged.
A spokesperson for Binance denies the allegations.
“The claims are meritless, and we will vigorously defend ourselves,” a spokesperson told Banking Dive via email.
Bankman-Fried and Ellison are each serving prison sentences for their roles in the downfall of FTX – he for 25 years, and she for two years.
On unrelated charges, Zhao recently completed a four-month term in federal prison.
