BlockFi, the cryptocurrency lender that filed for bankruptcy following the demise of FTX, received permission from a New Jersey bankruptcy court to begin auctioning off its cryptocurrency mining assets, and it claims it has interested parties looking to purchase all or a portion of the business.
In a filing earlier this month, the company stated that it had contacted 106 prospective purchasers about purchasing all or a portion of the business.
Their petition states that it hopes to receive buyer offers by February 20 and end the auction a week later. The business will next submit the motion of sale to the court by March 1 for whatever agreement it comes to.
BlockFi Gets Approval
According to Bloomberg, BlockFi’s attorney Francis Petrie stated during a hearing on Monday that the company has had “much interest in the market for bidding purposes.”
It stated in its Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition in November that it owed money to more than 100,000 creditors and that its assets and liabilities were in the range of $1 billion and $10 billion. BlockFi’s second-largest creditor, according to court filings, is the troubled cryptocurrency exchange FTX, to which they owe $275 million. 2
Even before FTX crashed, the crypto-lender was having trouble. BlockFi received a $400 million line of credit from FTX in July. For it, the unexpected decline in bitcoin values resulted in a liquidity shortage. The connection between it and FTX is convoluted. According to CNBC, BlockFi is locked into FTX and its related firms for up to $1.2 billion in assets. After FTX collapsed in November of last year, it was compelled to halt operations and customer withdrawals. In December, it petitioned the courts to permit withdrawals for a subset of its users as part of the bankruptcy proceedings.
