FTX Japan would let customers withdraw funds … if only anyone could log in

Add a busted tech platform to the list of the company's sins

FTX's Japanese outpost has teased good news for investors in the collapsed and disgraced trading platform – then dashed their hopes.

The crypto exchange's Japanese outpost was thought to be in better shape than the rest of the company, thanks to Japan's regulations that require such operations to hold more assets than other jurisdictions to safeguard liquidity and therefore customers' deposits.

FTX Japan alluded to that happy state of affairs last Thursday with a post offering the following cheery assessment of the situation:

Over the past 2+ weeks we have put together a plan for the resumption of withdrawal service, which has been shared with and approved by the new FTX Trading management team. Development work for this plan has already started and our engineering teams are working to allow FTX Japan users to withdraw their funds.

That post also stated that FTX Japan will issue weekly updates each Monday.

Which it did, yesterday, only to reveal:

Our company's FTX JP website and platform FTX JP are in a state of general functional failure, such as being unable to log in, screens not being displayed properly, withdrawals and deliveries being suspended, and inquiries being unable to be made. We will keep you updated on the status of these restorations. We apologize again for the inconvenience caused.

The fact that FTX JP's platforms are down is at odds with last week's suggestion that withdrawals would soon be possible.

There is some good news in the Monday post, which states FTX Japan held ¥10 billion ($73 million) of net assets as of September 2022, plus ¥17.8 billion ($130 million) of cash and deposits as of November. The post also details extensive crypto holdings, although plenty are in FTX's own utterly devalued FTT token.

Meanwhile, former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has taken to Twitter to declare he will he happy to appear before a US congressional committee to explain the collapse of his company … but only when it suits him to do so.

Rep. Waters, and the House Committee on Financial Services:

Once I have finished learning and reviewing what happened, I would feel like it was my duty to appear before the committee and explain.

I'm not sure that will happen by the 13th. But when it does, I will testify. https://t.co/c0P8yKlyQt

— SBF (@SBF_FTX) December 4, 2022

He has also admitted, in an interview, that he lost track of intermingled assets at FTX and trading company Alameda, and alleged that FTX's current management has made untruthful statements about the stricken company.

FTX, meanwhile, has posted a notice [PDF] of a creditor’s meeting scheduled for December 20. The company's next big day in bankruptcy court is January 11, 2023. ®