Alameda Seeks to Recover $446M in Crypto Paid to Voyager After Lender’s Bankruptcy

Defunct crypto trading firm Alameda Research – one arm of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s former empire – wants to regain around $446 million transferred to bankrupt lender Voyager Digital prior to Alameda’s own bankruptcy filing, a new lawsuit says.

According to a complaint filed Monday against Voyager Digital and HTC Trading, Alameda repaid all of its outstanding loans to Voyager after the lender filed for bankruptcy last July. Some of these loans had yet to mature at the time Voyager requested their repayment.

“The collapse of Alameda and its affiliates amid allegations that Alameda was secretly borrowing billions of FTX-exchange assets is widely known,” the filing said. “Largely lost in the (justified) attention paid to the alleged misconduct of Alameda and its now-indicted former leadership has been the role played by Voyager and other cryptocurrency ‘lenders’ who funded Alameda and fueled that alleged misconduct, either knowingly or recklessly.”

Voyager had 10 different loan sheets with Alameda at the time it filed for bankruptcy, the filing said. In various filings in September and October 2022, Voyager claimed it held FTT (an exchange token issued by FTX) and SRM (the token for the Serum protocol) as collateral for loans made to Alameda in the form of various cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, dogecoin, ether, USDC, litecoin and others.

Alameda repaid Voyager its loans in the form of bitcoin, ether and the other cryptocurrencies mentioned above, the filing said.

The trading shop’s lawyers said in Monday’s filing that they had “been unable to determine whether [Voyager] held a valid and effective lien or security interest” in this collateral at any time or whether the “purported collateral” was actually tied to any of Alameda’s obligations.

In the filing, Alameda is asking a court to rule that the transfers “are avoidable preferential transfers” and “award [Alameda] no less than $445.8 million (plus the value of any additional avoidable transfers Plaintiff learns,” alongside any fees incurred.