The infamous Bitfinex hack is back in the public eye. Forget the Netflix show, the real drama is the actual fight over who is entitled to restitution. Account holders may have given up years ago, but they now have a chance to recover their stolen Bitcoin, though Bitfinex stands in the way. In this article for Reuters Legal News and Westlaw Today, Joseph Cioffi and his co-authors discuss the...
To be a victim or creditor, that is the question. Whether ‘tis better to remain silent and suffer the outrageous fortune of a hacked exchange receiving $6 billion in restitution as the alleged sole victim of the hack, or take arms against that sea of trouble and by opposing end the exchange’s bid for a windfall? Just as Marcellus of Hamlet knew there was something rotten in the state of Denmark,...
In this Law360 article, Joseph Cioffi provides his thoughts on the fairness of distributing forfeited funds to preferred shareholders in the FTX bankruptcy, while creditors are arguably not being paid in full based on today’s crypto values.
The recent bankruptcy filings by several major crypto platforms have given rise to unexpected realities for customers and investors. The sudden change in rights, legal exposure in bankruptcy litigation and varying outcomes in the several different proceedings can be reminiscent of a Hollywood multiverse where infinite realities are possible. Perhaps the area in which an alternate reality is most...
July 5, 2024 and July 13, 2024 will mark the two-year anniversary of Voyager’s and Celsius’s bankruptcy filings, respectively. Under the Bankruptcy Code, actions to clawback pre-bankruptcy transfers, such as 90-day preferential transfers, must be commenced within two years after bankruptcy is filed. Given the impending deadline in both cases, we can expect a wave of clawback actions to be filed...
The FTX bankruptcy proceeding has become tangled with the criminal trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, following a path forged by some of the largest bankruptcies and frauds of the past such as Enron, Adelphia, and Madoff. Joseph Cioffi, Insolvency + Finance partner, was quoted in the Law360 article, “Long Before FTX, Criminal Cases Have Complicated CH. 11” presenting his takeaways from these watershed...
In 2022, the Uniform Law Commission adopted new amendments to the model Uniform Commercial Code ("UCC") to address cryptocurrency transactions, including secured lending involving digital assets. These amendments have been enacted by at least five states (Washington, New Mexico, Colorado, Indiana and North Dakota) and introduced in another 21 states (including California and Texas, but not New...
