Summary of Key Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) Amendments
One of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges—FTX Trading Ltd.—and many of its affiliates filed for bankruptcy earlier this month.1 While the full impact of the FTX bankruptcy is not yet clear, various responses from the executive branch and federal and state regulators indicate that, in the short term, agencies will continue to use their existing authorities to seek information about the practices of crypto market participants and to enforce existing rules to protect customers and avoid further market contagion.2 The following statements may indicate what market
We are heading into the holiday season. It’s a Wonderful Life will be on television. And cryptocurrency bankruptcies will be in the news. Yesterday, BlockFi filed for bankruptcy. What does a seventy year old Frank Capra movie – about a bank run in a small town during the Great Depression – tell us about the latest crypto platform’s liquidity crisis? Will depositors get their money back? Is there any insurance for the creditors?
Summary
1. State of the Restructuring Market
1.1 Market Trends and Changes
Cryptoassets are traded on a global basis. Indeed, the markets are even more global and constant than markets in more conventional financial instruments, rivalled only perhaps by the FX markets in their reach.
Bankruptcy is a formal process geared toward preserving stakeholder value. Often, the proceedings include negotiations between stakeholders that are arduous, time-consuming and expensive. Positioning the company for healthy and sustainable growth is often viewed as a postemergence priority, as companies naturally prioritize the near-term financial realities threatening their very survival.
Another domino has fallen. Earlier this year, we wrote about the challenges facing the crypto industry that resulted in the bankruptcy filings of Three Arrows Capital, Celsius Network, and Voyager Digital. We noted that other crypto entities could also end up in chapter 11, and that prediction has proven correct.
Following are this week’s summaries of the Court of Appeal for Ontario for the week of November 14, 2022.
Second Circuit Denies Appeal of Windstream Debtors’ Confirmation Order on Equitable Mootness Grounds