Ask HN: Is it worth submitting a claim for FTX holdings?
My son had $51K worth of crypto with FTX. On the 9th November he instructed them to sell the coins and obviously received no payment. He just received an email from Kroll Restructuring Administrators showing an amount to his credit of something like $3.00.
Are there any other HN readers in similar positions? How can one submit a claim under these circumstances?
He is absolutely devastated as this was his only savings and he has been unemployed for the last 12 months. I would appreciate any help and suggestions.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 89.3 ms ] threadpeople that refuse to follow the best practices dominate the stories of loosing all of their gambling chips
Or be frugal and thoughtful as folks did after the Great Depression.
This historical sequence of stock investors underperforming wildly in the early 1930s, followed by bond investors underperforming wildly in the 1940s-60s boom, is why the 60% stock/40% bond portfolio became the standard advice for cautious savers.
FTX's failure was due to fraud. Not "high risk investments." They literally didn't have the assets they claimed to have. The same investments held at other centralized exchanges or via self-custody (e.g. Bitcoin) would have lead to a different outcome.
B. Buy BTC on a legit exchange: 80% drawdown
Crypto is very high risk no matter what you do.
BTC is up 77% since the bottom of the collapse.
That’s roughly the situation. The trustee sold some of the coins so some will be cash.
Maybe whatever coins they recover increases in value substantially and creditors can be made ‘whole’ like with mtgox?
TODOs:
- Gather up all evidence and history relating to the account that can be found. Ideally FTX screenshots or statements, but barring that, any confirmations of USD and/or crypto deposits, withdrawals, trades, and other activity, in all formats, email confirmations, bank statements, crypto transaction histories, etc. to help serve as proof of the claim. You will need to redact any sensitive information, as the proof of claim is generally made public.
- Keep up with the UCC, they primarily post on Twitter - https://twitter.com/FTX_Committee/status/1641569407007707137 says "If you believe you have a net positive account balance on FTX’s exchanges and have not yet received your unique Customer Code from FTX’s claims agent, Kroll, please email FTXInfo@ra.kroll.com." - Emailing this address may be worth a try, but Kroll is difficult to work with, so likely won't help much because I'm sure they have a massive number of inquiries. The UCC also keeps some information at https://dm.epiq11.com/case/ftx/info2
- Work on the proof of claim. There is no huge rush as the bar date has not even been set yet, so make sure you can gather up as much info as possible and fill out the claim form as accurately as possible. Submit it with redacted evidence gathered up. Make sure you get confirmation of receipt.
Once you get the claim issue resolved, one possible outcome to consider if cash is needed before waiting years for the case to settle, is to sell the claim on a reputable market like Xclaim. (Current pricing "up to" 19c, I'm sure it'd be lower for a $50k claim)
You need answers to, and ideally proof of, the following:
- token holdings and USD balance before any transactions on the 9th
- token holdings and USD balance after the 9th
I've seen Twitter posts reporting inaccurate claim balances.
And I'm not sure a determination has been made yet on how tokens will be valued. That is, USD value at time of bankruptcy vs USD value at some court appointed date.
Find a community of FTX claimants, possibly on Twitter or similar, so you can stay up to date on the process.
Say he had a $51K portfolio of FTT tokens on the 9th, present value is ~$3K (https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/ftx-token). Higher if he held BTC or ETH.
So first step is to get a clearer picture of what was held. Then he can elect to submit a claim and wait for the process to play out, or he can try to sell his claim to a third party.
I wouldn’t have high expectations, but it’s probably worth preserving documentation and making sure your claim is considered.
You should file a claim, but keep expectations low.
You should review: https://www.getevolved.com/important-information/
> What should FTX customers know about their accounts?
> Evolve understands there is confusion about the status of these accounts. Please know your funds are safe and secure. By law, Evolve is holding onto these balances until the court overseeing the FTX bankruptcy allows us to release these funds.
> Evolve will work with each individual accountholder to ensure accuracy and timely return of the account balances. We urge FTX customers to contact us at support-ftx@getevolved.com for more information.
Evolve is a real bank (outlasted SVB/Silvergate/Signature/[Credit Suisse?]). I'd have to imagine their support is still overloaded, but worth an email nonetheless.
Even if so, I'd caution not to get hopes up too high, because I could imagine some sort of clawback occurring for trades that executed just before trading stopped.