FTX creditors' compensation starts, large amounts of SOL unlocking raise market concerns

On February 18, 2025, the first round of creditor payments for FTX officially began, marking a critical phase in the two-year bankruptcy liquidation. However, the market's attention is focused on another potential risk: on March 1, 11.2 million SOL tokens from the FTX bankruptcy auction are set to unlock, valued at approximately $1.9 billion. While the payments appear to be smoothly settled in fiat currency, the expectation of a large circulation of SOL has raised market concerns that FTX's asset disposal could once again impact the crypto ecosystem. Is this an overreaction, or are the risks not fully assessed?

The first round of compensation still has a huge amount unpaid.

According to public information, the beneficiaries of this round of compensation are the initial beneficiaries, specifically small creditors with a claim amount of $50,000 or less. Under FTX's restructuring plan, these creditors will receive full repayment and enjoy an annual interest rate of 9%, potentially leading to a repayment valued at 119% in fiat currency.

According to FTX creditors, approximately 800 million USD has been paid in this round of repayments, involving 162,000 accounts, which accounts for 35% of the expected 460,000 eligible claim accounts. Payments exceeding 50,000 USD will be made after May 30.

Previous reports indicated that the overall repayment plan for the first phase involves 6.5 to 7 billion USD. This round of repayments is expected to continue until March 4. Currently, FTX has not announced the actual repayment amount for the first round.

From a repayment perspective, as FTX has chosen fiat currency for compensation, this may not cause significant fluctuations in the cryptocurrency market, and may instead bring some new capital inflows to the market.

Nearly $2 billion in SOL tokens are about to be unlocked

The market's concerns about FTX mainly stem from the auction of crypto assets like Solana. Documents from 2023 show that FTX's total assets amount to only $4.77 billion, which is a difference of $6.8 billion from the estimated $11.5 billion in liabilities at that time. As the bull market in the crypto market arrives in 2024, the value of the crypto assets held by FTX has significantly increased.

Solana contributed the most funds to FTX. The SOL token has increased by more than 28 times since December 2022. As one of the major investors in Solana, FTX holds a large amount of locked SOL tokens. Data shows that FTX has sold 41 million SOL through three auctions, of which 11.2 million will be unlocked on March 1.

These tokens were not directly sold in the secondary market, but were purchased by multiple institutions at different prices. Overall, these tokens brought in $2.932 billion in revenue for FTX, becoming the largest single transaction in its crypto asset liquidation.

Although there is a risk of profit-taking sales for these tokens that are about to be unlocked, they only account for 2.3% of the current SOL circulation.

Other Cryptocurrency Asset Disposal Situations

In March 2024, FTX sold its shares and tokens in Mysten Labs for $95 million. By the end of 2024, the highest value of these assets reached $4.6 billion.

Aptos is another public chain project that FTX has heavily invested in. In 2022, FTX Ventures participated in a $150 million financing round for Aptos. Currently, Aptos has not disclosed the final outcome of this equity stake. Data from March 2023 shows that FTX held 5 million APT tokens at that time, valued at approximately $31.65 million based on current prices.

As of February 19, the largest holding in FTX on-chain addresses is the FTT token, with a total of 257 million pieces, valued at about $505 million. The total market value of FTT is only $657 million, and a large sell-off could significantly impact the price. FTX once asked users to provide purchase price information for FTT, but in the fiat currency compensation, FTT is temporarily valued at 0, and the compensation method for FTT holders is still unclear.

Documents disclosed in 2023 show that FTX also held a variety of major crypto assets, including AVAX, BTC, ETH, and XRP. However, as of February 19, these assets are no longer visible in FTX's public wallet addresses and may have been sold off during the liquidation process. Currently, the value of FTX's on-chain address holdings is approximately $1.269 billion.

With FTX beginning to make repayments, this event is about to come to an end. After more than two years of transformation, the cryptocurrency industry has entered a new landscape, and FTX's influence is gradually becoming history. Recently, the market fluctuations caused by FTX seem to stem more from the panic sentiment during the current market volatility rather than substantial risks.