Users of FTX Japan will be able to withdraw their crypto and fiat currency deposits starting tomorrow, according to the Japanese division of the defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
Liquid Japan, a cryptocurrency trading platform that FTX bought in the spring, will make the withdrawal procedure easier. The firm made the news after FTX Japan halted withdrawals in November last year as founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire started falling apart.
According to the Tokyo-based business, customers who are qualified to withdraw their money have already been alerted through email about the procedure, which involves setting up an account with Liquid Japan and verifying the amount of their FTX Japan account.
“We would like to express our deepest apologies,” FTX Japan stated in a blog post. “The bankruptcy of our parent company […] has had a wide range of impacts, and we have had to wait for a long time to resume operations.”
FTX Japan warned that the procedure might slow down if several clients submit withdrawal requests at once. According to Bloomberg, the site has $94.5 million in cryptocurrencies and $46 million in fiat money as of December 1.
Customers who did business with other FTX subsidiaries, such as FTX.US, are still in the dark. At the same time, the worldwide exchange navigates bankruptcy procedures in a Delaware court, even if consumers of FTX Japan may shortly receive some relief.
In November of last year, FTX declared bankruptcy following a run on the exchange brought on by a sharp decline in the value of the platform’s native coin FTT. When assets left the exchange, it became apparent that FTX did not have one-to-one client assets reserves, could not recognize withdrawals, and had to declare bankruptcy.
Bankman-Fried was later detained and charged with a long list of financial offenses, including conspiracy to launder money and wire fraud. He has already entered a not-guilty plea to all of the charges.
FTX Japan began operations in June of last year and was only operational for a little over six months until Bankman-Fried’s company failed. At the time of the subsidiary’s creation, Bankman-Fried was chosen as the organization’s temporary CEO.
“Japan is a highly regulated market with a potential market size of almost $1 trillion when it comes to cryptocurrency trading,” Bankman-Fried stated last June.
FTX submitted a move to allow the sale of the exchange’s four financially stable subsidiaries in December last year. These companies were FTX Japan, FTX Europe, Embed Technologies, and LedgerX. The initiative would assist in raising funds to pay back the billions of dollars owed to creditors.
More recently, the Southern District of New York judge presiding over Bankman-Fried’s criminal case considered an amendment to the FTX founder’s bail agreement that would prohibit him from using electronics at all because of his use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and sending encrypted messages using the Signal app.
The team in charge of the exchange’s bankruptcy proceedings also issued a warning last Friday about phony tokens that purported to reflect debt owed by FTX users.