The FTX Bankruptcy Trust has filed a $1.15 billion lawsuit against Bitcoin mining firm Genesis Digital Assets, marking one of the largest clawback actions yet in the ongoing efforts to recover assets lost in the collapse of the FTX exchange.
The complaint alleges that Genesis Digital and its co-founders received more than $1 billion in fraudulent transfers from Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research between 2021 and 2022.
‘Great detriment’ to FTX customers
The investments, the trust argues, were made at “outrageously inflated prices” and provided little to no value to FTX’s business, which was already insolvent at the time.
“Between August 2021 and April 2022, Bankman-Fried caused Alameda to Purchase several tranches of shares in GDA, a Bitcoin mining firm, at outrageously inflated prices,” the filing read. “While FTX Group funds were used to purchase the shares, only Alameda—and, in turn, Bankman-Fried, Alameda’s 90% owner—was to receive any benefit, to the great detriment of customers and other creditors of FTX.com”
Under U.S. bankruptcy law, the trust is empowered to pursue “avoidance actions” — lawsuits designed to claw back funds that were improperly transferred before a company filed for bankruptcy.
The size of this suit underscores the scale of FTX’s asset recovery campaign, which has become one of the largest and most complex in U.S. bankruptcy history following the exchange’s 2022 collapse.
According to the filing, most of the funds came from customer deposits on FTX.com that were funneled into Alameda Research and then redirected into Genesis Digital.
The trust claims the mining company’s co-founders, Rashit Makhat and Marco Krohn, personally benefited, selling more than $550 million worth of their own shares to Alameda in the process.
The lawsuit describes Genesis Digital as a politically connected miner in Kazakhstan that took advantage of cheap energy and favorable treatment under the country’s former president, Nursultan Nazarbayev. But by late 2021, Kazakhstan’s power grid was under strain from an influx of miners, and new taxes, blackouts, and social unrest destabilized the industry.
The complaint alleges that despite these clear risks — as well as unaudited financials, money laundering concerns, and a lack of interest from other investors — Bankman-Fried pressed ahead with outsized investments, according to Bloomberg reporting.
“Genesis Digital stands as one of Bankman-Fried’s most reckless investments with commingled and misappropriated funds,” the trust said in its filing.
The case comes as Bankman-Fried serves a 25-year prison sentence after being convicted on seven criminal counts, including fraud and conspiracy, tied to FTX’s downfall.
