Binance Pays $1 Billion for Voyager Assets…Perhaps
Posted by Colin Lambert. Last updated: December 19, 2022
Crypto firm Voyager Digital, which earlier this year filed for bankruptcy and was “rescued” by FTX, only to lose out when the latter also went bankrupt, says it has reached agreement with Binance US to sell its assets.
Although Voyager says the deal is worth $1.02 billion, the reality is that Binance is paying some $20 million in cash, rather the valuation is based upon the current market value of frozen customer assets. When FTX was announced as the buyer of the same asserts earlier this year, they were valued at just over $1.4 billion and the firm was paying an additional $51 million.
Should the deal go through, some customer assets, which have been frozen since Voyager declared bankruptcy in July, would be free for (prorata) distribution back to clients. The value for Binance will ultimately be how many of those accounts actually want to jump out of the frying pan into the fire and leave their assets with another centralised exchange.
Voyager says its claims against Three Arrows Capital remain with the bankruptcy estate, and any future recovery on these and other non-released claims will be distributed to the estate’s creditors.
Binance.US will make a $10 million “good faith” deposit and will reimburse Voyager for certain expenses up to a maximum of $15 million, the firms say. Should the deal not close by April 18, 2023 subject to a one-month extension, the agreement allows Voyager to immediately move to return value to customers – although how it will do that is unclear.