FTX’s $900M payout starts Friday as creditors face 6-month onboarding deadline

FTX’s fifth distribution of roughly $900 million has begun reaching creditors, with former users reporting Friday that funds sent by the FTX Recovery Trust were being released through Kraken as scheduled. The latest round covers eligible holders of allowed Convenience and Non-Convenience claims who completed the required pre-distribution steps by the June 17 record date, with payments also routed through BitGo and Payoneer. The trust has said claim allowance and payment readiness are separate steps, meaning creditors still needed to complete KYC, tax, onboarding and other applicable requirements to qualify for this round. Holders of allowed claims still awaiting provider onboarding face a six-month window starting July 31 or risk forfeiting their right to distributions. FTX outlined class-by-class recovery levels for the distribution: Dotcom customer claims receive an additional 9% and U.S. customer claims 5%, taking both to 105% cumulatively; general unsecured claims and digital asset loan claims each gain 3%, bringing them to 103%; and Convenience Class claims stand at 120% in some cases. A separate $18 million payment is also being made to eligible preferred equity holders. Following this round, cumulative repayments are estimated at about $11 billion. The exchange’s collapse in 2022 triggered one of the crypto industry’s biggest bankruptcy cases, and repayments have been made in cash rather than in the original digital assets. In a separate development, a bankruptcy judge recently ruled that the FTX trust cannot pursue damages against Binance and its former CEO Changpeng Zhao, though the estate’s effort to claw back $1.76 billion tied to Binance’s repurchase of its FTX stake remains alive.