Voyager Digital Plans to Liquidate Assets, Wind Down After Sale Dreams Crushed

Lawyers for Voyager Digital say the bankrupt crypto lender will self-liquidate its assets and wind down operations after failing to clinch a deal on a sale to either FTX US or Binance.US.

The announcement, made in a court filing on Friday, comes 10 days after Binance US abruptly pulled out of a $1 billion deal to purchase Voyager Digital’s assets following a U.S. government intervention to block part of it. Before the deal with Binance US, the crypto had a deal to sell itself to FTX – a transaction that fell apart when FTX filed for bankruptcy protection in November.

According to the filing, Voyager’s customers will receive an initial recovery of 36% of their crypto holdings – an abysmally low recovery rate compared to both estimates of their recovery rate of 72-73% if either of the acquisition plans were successful, as well as recovery estimates for creditors of other bankrupt crypto platforms. Celsius’ creditors, for example, will receive an estimated 70% of their holdings.

The recovery rate could rise, according to the filing, if defunct crypto trading firm Alameda Research’s attempt to claw back $446 million from Voyager’s estate fails. In addition to reserving $446 million of the estate’s holdings for the Alameda suit, Voyager’s lawyers are also withholding an additional $259.6 million for litigation costs, administrative claims and assorted other “holdbacks.”

Creditors who have any of the 67 “supported” tokens, including bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH), stuck on the platform will be able to withdraw the allowable percent of their crypto directly. For those with any of the 38 “unsupported tokens,” including Solana's SOL and Algorand's ALGO, Voyager will liquidate everything and pay customers back with USD coin (USDC), a stablecoin.

Objections to the planned liquidation process must be submitted to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York (SDNY) by May 15 at 4 p.m. ET (20:00 UTC).