Bankman-Fried Responds To Voyager Digital 'Low-Ball Bid' Accusation: 'We're Not Trying To Make Any Money On This'

In late July, three businesses connected to 30-year-old billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried put out an offer to bankrupt cryptocurrency platform Voyager Digital Ltd VYGVQ to give its users the chance to get some of their frozen crypto funds back before the bankruptcy process is over.

“It’s a low-ball bid dressed up as a white knight rescue,” the company said in a court filing last week.

Related: 'Low-Ball Bid': Bankrupt Voyager Rejects Sam Bankman-Fried Firms' Buyout Offer

What happened: Bankman-Fried, CEO of crypto platform FTX, had a chance to respond to Voyager’s reaction to his restructuring offer on Tuesday in an interview with Fox Business.

“We want to appeal to the customers of Voyager — we’re not trying to make any money on this,” said the FTX CEO. “We’re not taking any spread, we’re giving out everything that there is. We want to make it as quick and painless as we can for customers.”

Bankman-Fried offered customers 100% of the remaining assets, including any future claims recovered.

“There are a lot of people with a lot of interest in this particular case,” Bankman-Fried explained. “There are a lot of people looking for ways to make fees — you know, that’s what we’re trying to stop. Let’s just stop bleeding out this asset and just get the funds that remain back to customers.”

"A lot of the bids we were hearing people thinking about giving was ten, 20, or 30 cents on the dollar back to customers," the billionaire explained. "[The buyers] are taking the bulk of it. We're trying to appeal to the core real-estate holders of Voyager, the customers."

Why it matters: Bankman-Fried invested around $1 billion in his crypto businesses, at a time when the market value of cryptocurrencies has fallen by $2 trillion in just eight months due to a bear market.

The Voyager offer may win Bankman-Fried additional fans, who may now view him as the savior of cryptocurrency.

Disclosure: Benzinga CEO Jason Raznick Is a member of the unsecured creditor committee in the Voyager Digital bankruptcy case. 

Photo: Courtesy of commons.wikimedia.org