Update: Genesis Trading Transfers $1.5B for Creditor Repayments

Wallets linked to Genesis Trading began moving funds on the morning of 2nd August 2024, suspected to be linked to in-kind payments paid out to their creditors. In just an hour, 16.6K BTC ($1.1B) and 166.3K ETH ($521.1M) were transferred from wallets linked to Genesis Trading on the Ethereum and Bitcoin blockchains to several centralized exchanges including Coinbase, Gemini and Kraken, as well as a number of Gnosis Safe multisig wallets and unlabelled wallet addresses.

The Bitcoin wallet linked to the transfer (bc1qme) received its holdings from Genesis wallets three days ago on 30th July and currently still holds 2.88K BTC ($183.2M). The Ethereum wallet linked to the fund transfer (0xC62c) also received its first inflow from Genesis around the same time three days ago and currently still holds 18.2K ETH ($55.24M).

These transfers are a significant development in a long-running bankruptcy case. The use of in-kind payments is particularly notable. It means creditors are receiving the actual crypto assets they are owed, rather than a cash equivalent fixed at a past date. This allows them to benefit from any price appreciation that occurred during the lengthy legal proceedings.

The payments are believed to be part of the $3B in assets to be returned to customers as part of Genesis Trading’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy liquidation plan. Genesis Trading filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after the collapse of cryptocurrency hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and FTX, which left the firm with more than $3.5B owed to its top 50 creditors. Some users including Compound Finance founder, Robert Leshner, have already reported the receipt of the disbursement from the Genesis estate.