Crypto exchange giant FTX to acquire bankrupt Voyager’s assets for $1.42 billion

Sam Bankman Fried-owned crypto exchange FTX is set to buy Voyager Digital’s assets after winning a bankruptcy auction. The embattled Voyager Digital said announced that FTX has won its assets in a $1.42-billion bid at an auction. FTX’s bid was valued at nearly $1.4 billion, the two companies said in a statement late Monday.

In July, Voyager Digital rejected FTX’s bid to acquire the company saying it was a “low-ball bid dressed up as a white knight rescue.” The FTX bid comprises a fair market value of all Voyager cryptocurrency, at a to-be-determined date, which is pegged at about $1.31 billion at current market prices and an additional $111 million in incremental value, Voyager said in a statement.

On July 5, Voyager filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York on Tuesday, according to a filing from the company. In its bankruptcy filing, Voyager estimated that it had more than 100,000 creditors and between $1 billion and $10 billion in assets and liabilities in the same range.

Voyager was founded in 2017 by established Wall Street and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and veterans who teamed up to bring a better, more transparent, and cost-efficient alternative for trading crypto-assets to the marketplace. Its founders, Gaspard de Dreuzy, Oscar Salazar, Philip Eytan, Serge Kreiker, and Stephen Ehrlich, also have combined decades’ worth of experience from leading organizations like E*TRADE, Uber, TradeIt, and Lightspeed Financial.

FTX was founded in 2019 by 29-year-old MIT graduate Sam Bankman-Fried and his co-founder Gary Wang. The Bahamas-based crypto exchange FTX offers derivatives products like futures and options as well as spot trading. Once an unknown startup, FTX has become a key player in the crypto space, rivaling the likes of Coinbase and Binance.

Bankman-Fried, who currently resides in Hong Kong, is now worth at least $25 billion making him the richest person in crypto, according to Forbes. Sam graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2013 at the age of 21. He was skilled in math and loved to solve problems and give back to society.