According to the Securities Commission of the Bahamas, it is in possession of FTX assets worth $3.5 billion, which it had seized in early November, not long after the company had filed for bankruptcy in the US.
The Commission asserted that it would continue holding onto the digital assets in its wallets until the Supreme Court of the Bahamas issues instructions about what to do with them.
The assets
It will have to be decided if the assets are to be distributed to the creditors and customers of the now-defunct crypto exchange, or if the insolvency of the company has to be handled differently.
The value of the assets mentioned above is in accordance with the price of the digital assets at the time the transfer was made i.e. on November 12th.
There has been a significant change in the figures since then. Moreover, the Commission also stated that it had come to the conclusion the previous month that there was a major risk of the digital assets’ dissipating.
This was because there had been reports about a cyberattack on the FTX crypto exchange circulating over the internet.
The reports indicated that employees of the FTX exchange had not been able to access the Amazon Web Services system of the company.
The attack
Not long after the financial troubles of the company came to light and it went ahead and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, there was an attack on FTX and its origins are unknown as yet.
The attack saw cryptocurrencies worth $650 million compromised. There has been a great deal of criticism directed toward the role the regulators in the Bahamas have played in the FTX scandal.
Earlier this month, a petition had been submitted to Judge John Dorsey in a Delaware court by a group of lawyers who were representing FTX.
They had asked the judge to deny the request of the regulators in the Bahamas to get access to the cloud system of the US division, which could include data from its Amazon Web Services, Slack, and Google accounts.
The explanation
According to the lawyers, the request from the Bahamian regulators is not warranted. They said in a court filing that it posed many security risks to FTX’s debtors, creditors, customers as well as assets.
They added that the Bahamian government had not been able to provide any justification for their request, so it should be denied.
The FTX attorneys also said that in all the conversations that they have had with the regulatory bodies of the island states, they have not received anything.
They said that they had just found a stone wall, as the regulators had completely refused to provide any information, which include details of the assets they diverted.
This is undoubtedly an important concern because more FTX funds have been moved and transferred in recent days.
As a matter of fact, it is not just funds connected to FTX, but those related to Alameda Research, its sister firm, have also been moved.