Crypto Bankruptcies: What Creditors Were Owed and What They Got Back

Common questions about crypto company failures

How much money have crypto companies owed their customers when they failed?

Between 2014 and 2026 this registry records $32.92 billion owed to customers and creditors across 26 verified failures of $10 million or more, of which $15.98 billion has been paid back so far. The figure counts claims as scheduled or allowed in the proceeding. It is not the companies' former valuations and not the peak market value of the tokens involved, both of which produce much larger and much less meaningful numbers.

Did FTX and Celsius creditors get their money back?

It depends entirely on what "back" means, and this is the most misquoted point in the subject. 8 of the estates here repay claims that were converted into dollars on the day the case opened. A plan that pays 100 per cent of such a claim has repaid the dollar value of the assets as of that date — not the assets themselves. If those assets rose in price during the proceeding, and in crypto they usually did, the creditor receives far less than they put in while the headline reads "made whole". Only 5 estates in this registry have returned assets in kind. Every recovery figure in this registry states which of the two it is.

What is the biggest crypto bankruptcy?

FTX, measured by claims against the estate, at $11.2 billion, after customers lost access on November 8, 2022. Ranking by claims rather than by press coverage matters: the most reported collapse is not always the one that owed the most.

Why do crypto exchanges and lenders fail?

Fraud or misappropriation is the most common proximate cause here, behind 7 of 26 verified failures. Most collapses have more than one cause — a hole in the balance sheet and a withdrawal run usually arrive together — so this registry records the trigger rather than trying to apportion blame across everything that went wrong.

How long do crypto bankruptcies take?

Every one of the 26 verified cases in this registry is still open, and 11 of them have distributed nothing to creditors at all. Estates spanning several jurisdictions run longest, because assets have to be recovered under one country's law before they can be distributed under another's. The year a case opened is in the registry alongside its current status.

Which year was worst for crypto company failures?

2022, with $29.9 billion in claims across 13 verified failures. Failures cluster: one large counterparty collapsing takes down the businesses that lent to it, so the totals for a bad year are driven by contagion rather than by many unrelated events.

Can I use this data in my own reporting?

Yes. The registry is published under CC BY 4.0, so you may republish, adapt and build on it, including commercially, as long as you credit iTokenly and link back. CSV and JSON exports are linked at the top of the page and need no key or account. Every entry lists its sources, including docket numbers where a case exists, so you can pull the filing rather than take a figure from us.