Crypto exchange FTX expects to have more than 1m creditors

The collapsed crypto exchange FTX expects to have more than 1 million individual creditors, the company has said in its first bankruptcy filing, scattered across more than 100 companies in the wider group.

Typically, the Delaware bankruptcy court requires the company to file a list of the 20 largest unsecured debtors but FTX has requested permission to do things differently: because it has more than 100 companies filing for bankruptcy as one bloc, it wants to amalgamate all the claims into one list of 50 people and organisations.

While depositors in a cryptocurrency exchange may feel similar to bank account holders, they have far less legal protection. In the case of a collapsed exchange such as FTX, they are simply unsecured creditors, and legally stand to be some of the last creditors to recover funds, far behind bank loans and slightly ahead of equity owners.