FTX Japan prepping to resume withdrawals by end of month

• The Financial Services Agency of Japan asked that FTX Japan to halt business before the US bankruptcy filing.
• In December, the FTX branch filed to be allowed to resume withdrawals.
• Customers have been asked to verify their account balances before resuming withdrawals.

The Japanese branch of the collapsed crypto exchange FTX is apparently considering resuming withdrawals before the end of February. On February 17, Bloomberg reported that the exchange had sent out messages asking affected customers to verify their account balances before withdrawals could resume.

According to the exchange’s COO, Seth Melamed, customers can move their crypto assets to the FTX-owned Liquid Global platform and withdrawals could start “very soon.”

FTX japan and FTX Global

In November FTX together with its affiliated firms filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US. But even before FTX could file for bankruptcy in the US, the Financial Services Agency of Japan (FSA) had already asked FTX Japan to halt business operations.

In December 2022, FTX Japan filed for a strategy to resume user withdrawals. The strategy attempted to distinguish the firm’s money from the clients’ money. The firm argued that customers’ funds should be excluded from the exchange’s bankruptcy proceedings in Japan.

Mid-January 2023, FTX obtained approval from a US court allowing it to sell some of its entities including FTX Japan.

At the time of closing business in November 2022, FTX Japan reportedly had about 19.6 billion yen in cash.

The recent developments with FTX Japan come as the former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried got served with Deposition Subpoena by creditors. Representatives for Voyager Digital’s unsecured creditors request that Sam Bankman-Fried and several top-level executives from FTX and Alameda Research should provide documents and appear in court remotely next week for a deposition.