Former users of the collapsed FTX exchange began receiving funds this week as the estate carried out its fifth distribution round since the company's 2022 bankruptcy, releasing approximately $900 million to affected accounts. The payout brings cumulative repayments to creditors to roughly $11 billion.
Funds moved through several third-party platforms designated to handle the payouts, including Kraken, BitGo, and Payoneer. Former FTX user Sunil Kavuri said on X that he had been notified the previous week that funds were being sent to Kraken, which released them to recipients on Friday as scheduled.
A Long Road Back for Creditors
FTX filed for bankruptcy in November 2022 after the exchange collapsed amid revelations that customer funds had been misappropriated, wiping out billions of dollars in user deposits almost overnight. The fallout led to criminal charges against several of the company's top executives.
As of this week, former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and Ryan Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX's Bahamian affiliate, remain in federal prison. Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research, was released in January after serving just over a year of her sentence.
Binance Clawback Claim Still Pending
The distribution comes shortly after a bankruptcy court ruled in late July that the FTX estate cannot pursue damages against Binance or its former CEO, Changpeng Zhao. That ruling does not resolve everything tied to Binance, however — the estate's $1.76 billion clawback claim against the exchange remains active and unresolved.
The staged distribution process has allowed the estate to gradually return funds as claims are verified and legal disputes are worked through, rather than issuing a single lump-sum payout. With roughly $11 billion now repaid across five rounds, the case remains one of the largest creditor recovery efforts in the crypto industry's history.
