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The FTX logo on a laptop screen. Andrey Rudakov | Bloomberg via Getty Images FTX's top bankruptcy , legal, and financial advisors have billed the company more than $19.6 million in fees for work done in 2022, according to Tuesday bankruptcy court filings. More than $10 million of that was for work done in Nov. 2022, as Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto empire entered bankruptcy protection in Delaware. The firms will initially only be paid a little over $15.5 million, or 80% of the value of their work, under a court-ordered interim compensation plan. The law firms that billed FTX are Sullivan & Cromwell, Landis Rath & Cobb, and Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan. Professional advisor Alvarez & Marsal and financial advisor AlixPartners also billed the company. Some of the work that the firms billed for involved meetings with other companies that also were billing FTX for their time, or involved corresponding with former and current executives, including Caroline Elli...

Robinhood Markets, Inc. CEO and co-founder Vlad Tenev and co-founder Baiju Bhatt pose with Robinhood signage on Wall Street after the company's IPO in New York City, U.S., July 29, 2021. Andrew Kelly | Reuters Robinhood Markets CEO Vlad Tenev said Tuesday he's unclear what Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced former CEO of FTX, is going to do with his 7.6% stake in his trading app. "I'm not surprised that it's one of the more valuable assets they have on on their balance sheet because it is public company's stock," Tenev said on CNBC's "Squawk Box." "We don't have a lot of information that you guys don't have. We're just watching this unfold and ... it's going to be locked up in bankruptcy proceedings , most likely for some time. And so we're just kind of seeing how that plays out." In May, Bankman-Fried took a 7.6% stake in Robinhood worth $648 million in the belief that the shares "represent an a...

Days before FTX’s bankruptcy filing last month, co-CEO Ryan Salame told Bahamian authorities that founder Sam Bankman-Fried may have committed fraud by sending customer money from the crypto exchange to his other firm, Alameda Research. According to a filing on Wednesday tied to FTX’s bankruptcy proceedings, Salame disclosed “possible mishandling of clients’ assets” by Bankman-Fried. The letter included in the filing was dated Nov. 9, and was sent from the Securities Commission of the Bahamas to the commissioner of police. FTX declared bankruptcy  on Nov. 11. The disclosure on Wednesday marks the first public acknowledgment of an insider turning on Bankman-Fried, who was arrested in the Bahamas on Monday after the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York shared a sealed indictment with the Bahamian government. The indictment, unsealed on Tuesday, charged Bankman-Fried with eight criminal counts related to fraud, money laundering and improper use of customer funds. Salame ...

Distressed crypto firm BlockFi has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey following the implosion of putative acquirer FTX. In the filing, the company indicated that it had more than 100,000 creditors, with liabilities and assets ranging from $1 billion to $10 billion. In the filing, the company listed an outstanding $275 million loan to FTX US, the American arm of Sam Bankman-Fried’s now-bankrupt empire. A BlockFi subsidiary also moved for bankruptcy in Bermuda concurrently with the American filing. Bermuda, like the Bahamas, has embraced crypto as the future of finance. Both established frameworks to deal specifically with crypto assets and digital currencies. Both the Bahamas, with FTX’s bankruptcy , and now Bermuda, with BlockFi’s, face the first significant legal tests of their crypto regulations. BlockFi’s bankruptcy filing shows that the company’s largest disclosed client has a balance of nearly $28 mill...

The crypto giant FTX and its affiliated companies have started the process of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy , with founder Sam Bankman-Fried stepping down as CEO. The filing represents a staggering turn for the cryptocurrency exchange, once reportedly valued at $32 billion and seen as the face of the industry thanks to its voluminous marketing and advertising efforts. The resignation of Bankman-Fried, 30, is stunning. He was a crypto wunderkind who graced the cover of Forbes and Fortune and had emerged as a major Democratic donor and a leader of what has been dubbed the "effective altruism" movement, which sought to reshape philanthropy. Over the past week, the exchange faced the equivalent of a bank run as observers and customers called into question whether the exchange was both liquid — meaning it could come up with currency on demand to pay customers looking to withdraw funds — and solvent, meaning its loans and investments were worth more than its debts. "I want...