FTX Sells LedgerX for $50 Million

FTX and its debtors announced on Tuesday the sale of its crypto derivatives exchange subsidiary LedgerX to M7 Holdings, an affiliate of Miami International Holdings (MIH), for a total consideration of about $50 million.

FTX Offloads LedgerX to Miami International Holdings

Miami International Holdings is a US-based exchange conglomerate owning several trading platforms. It holds a US license to operate a commodities exchange and acquired the Minneapolis Grain Exchange (MGEX) in 2020. Now, the acquisition of LedgerX will allow the company to enter crypto trading.

The debtors of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange will receive the proceeds from M7 Holdings, which won the bankruptcy auction for the purchase.

“We are pleased to reach this agreement with MIH, which is an example of our continuing efforts to monetize assets to deliver recoveries to stakeholders,” said John J. Ray III, the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Restructuring Officer of the FTX Debtors.

New FTX filing today shows Kroll sent several documents to Office of the US Trustee, staff attorney Juliet Sarkessian.Among those documents were several relating to the sale of LedgerX, including a fully redacted Bidding Objector Service List and a fully redacted Interested… pic.twitter.com/L2bpPesEjt

Liquidating FTX Assets

FTX purchased Ledger Holdings, the parent company of LedgerX, through its American subsidiary, FTX US, in 2021 in a reported deal for $298 million. LedgerX is a crypto derivatives exchange with three licenses from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), allowing it to list futures contracts for commodities, provide clearing services and broker futures trades. FTX rebranded the platform to FTX.US Derivatives.

In addition, LedgerX’s holding company owned crypto hedge fund LedgerPrime, which returned external capital last September.

Despite being owned by the tainted firm, FTX, LedgerX operated independently with limited exposure to its parent. According to Coindesk, LedgerX generated trading and clearing revenue of $1.2 million in 2022 and posted a negative EBITDA of $17 million.

FTX's management sought the court’s approval to sell LedgerX and three other subsidiaries, its European and Japanese entities, and the equities trading platform Embed Technologies. It argued that all of these platforms, acquired recently by FTX, are facing regulatory backlash despite minimum exposure to the parent, and they need to be sold to retain their value. The US court granted permission to sell all four entities in January.

While LedgerX got a buyer, the other three FTX subsidiaries are still available for purchase. However, FTX debtors did not publicly announce any bidding auction for them.

Meanwhile, the Japanese and European subsidiaries of FTX resumed withdrawals for their customers. FTX Japan revealed that $50 million was withdrawn from the platform within hours of the withdrawals being resumed. However, FTX Europe did not post any figures.