Ripple to buy FTX empire

• Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has shown interest in purchasing certain parts of the FTX empire. 

• Garlinghouse claimed to have received a call from the resigned FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried two days before filing for bankruptcy.

The FTX empire has been in the news for the past few days after Binance rescinded the decision to bail it out, sending the entire crypto ecosystem crashing. While companies are contemplating the need to acquire the assets of the embattled exchange, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse has shown interest in purchasing certain parts of the FTX empire. This was revealed at the Ripple’s Swell conference in London held on November 16 and 17. 

Garlinghouse claimed to have received a call from the resigned FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried two days before filing for bankruptcy. According to Garlinghouse, the conversation was primarily about the possibility of Ripple acquiring any of the FTX owner businesses. 

Part of my conversation was if he needs liquidity, maybe there’s businesses that he has bought or he has that we would want to own […] Would we have bought some of those from him? I definitely think that was on the table.

It is important to note that about 130 companies affiliated with FTX including FTX.US were included in the bankruptcy filing. However, the likes of “crypto clearinghouse LedgerX, FTX Digital Markets, FTX Australia Pty, and payments processor FTX Express Pay” were not part of the proceedings. 

Ripple is reportedly interested in the part that served customer services

Garlinghouse in his speech hinted that he could take a look at the FTX offer, however, a potential transaction would be different from it would have been one on one considering that FTX has already filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. 

I’m not saying we won’t look at those things – I’m sure we will. But it’s a harder path to transact.

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Ripple is reported to have shown interest in buying the parts of the business that served customer services. On November 10, Ripple chief technology officer David Schwartz notified FTX employees that they are always hiring and could get a chance with them if they were not involved in “compliance, finance, or business ethics.” 

FTX recently appointed restructuring administration firm Kroll to track all claims against the company. Kroll is also tasked to update all third parties throughout its chapter 11 bankruptcy case. As of November 18, only eight claims were listed in the database.

The eight claims were estimated at $40.9 million. FTX Trading is also said to own customers and investors around $8 billion. The number of creditors involved with FTX is said to be over one million. According to corporate securities lawyer Margaret Rosenfeld, it will take years for any of them to receive funds back.

You can’t make creditor distributions until these claims are analyzed. It’s also way too early to speculate on what kind of distribution creditors will get back. Though in mega cases, such as this, full recovery would be unusual.