FTX Recovery Trust begins fifth payout round, sends $900 million through Kraken, BitGo and Payoneer

The FTX Recovery Trust has started its fifth distribution to creditors, with $900 million going out to affected users. For PSPs and payout rails, the detail that matters is simple: even years after a collapse, the mechanics of creditor repayment still run through named intermediaries like Kraken, BitGo and Payoneer.

1. Former FTX user Sunil Kavuri said in a Friday X post that he received funds from the FTX Recovery Trust through Kraken. He also said he got a notice last week that FTX had sent the funds to Kraken, which released them on Friday as scheduled.
2. The $900 million payout is part of the trust’s fifth distribution round since FTX filed for bankruptcy in 2022. After this latest round, FTX’s trust is estimated to have paid out about $11 billion to affected users who lost access to their funds for years.
3. The distribution plan also includes exchanges such as BitGo and Payoneer. For operators, that is the relevant part of the plumbing: creditor recovery in a major crypto bankruptcy is not just a court process, it is a multi-provider payout operation.
4. FTX remains one of the biggest exchange failures of 2022, and the case has already produced criminal charges against former executives over the misuse of user funds. Former CEO Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried and Ryan Salame, the co-CEO of FTX’s Bahamian affiliate, were still in federal prison as of July, while former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison was released in January after serving more than a year.
5. Separately, last week a bankruptcy court judge ruled that the FTX trust could not pursue damages against Binance and former CEO Changpeng Zhao. Chief Judge Karen B. Owens did not dismiss the trust’s claim to claw back $1.76 billion from Binance, which the trust says was used to repurchase its stake in FTX and was tied in part to “Bankman-Fried’s pervasive and now well-known malfeasance.”