Ex-Voyager Executives Suggest Live Trading as Restructuring Plan
Godfrey Benjamin Aug 01, 2022 03:55
Shingo Lavine and his father, Adam Lavine, both equity holders in Voyager and developers of Ethos, a leading cryptocurrency technology company, have proposed a restructuring plan to the troubled U.S. crypto lender.
Shingo Lavine and his father, Adam Lavine, both equity holders in Voyager and developers of Ethos, a leading cryptocurrency technology company, have proposed a restructuring plan to the troubled U.S. crypto lender.
Lavine's restructuring proposal filed last week suggests that Voyager suspends all its lending activities and focuses on conducting live trading.
Three years ago, Voyager acquired the assets of crypto tech firm Ethos at about $4 million. This made Shingo Lavine the Chief Innovation Officer at Voyager while he was still a member of the company's Board of Directors. Shortly after, he left Voyager due to certain disagreements with the company's direction.
In the turmoil of the current crypto winter, Voyager Digital filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York. This afforded it the right to come up with an efficient restructuring plan which will create a path to resume account access and return value to customers while reimbursing them.
Voyager's Initial Restructuring Proposal
Not cast on stones, the initial restructuring plan was to give customers with crypto in their accounts an assortment of proceeds from the loan owed by Three Arrows Capital (3AC), shares in the newly restructured company, and Voyager tokens. This is in addition to the crypto already in their accounts.
3AC currently owes the crypto assets lender over $650 million in cryptocurrency. Breaking it down further, the previously undisclosed loan is 15,250 Bitcoin (BTC) and $350 million USDC. At hand, Voyager has over $110 million as cash and owned crypto assets. It still has $350 million in its For Benefit of Customers (FBO) account at Metropolitan Commercial Bank.
Voyager has over $1.3 billion in crypto assets on its platform. Although, some of it was planned to be used as liquidity for the day-to-day running of the platform while the restructuring takes place. Not yet to be concluded, but the Lavines' new 8-step proposal is a shift from these initial plans.
The father and son wish their new firm Emerald would become a pivotal collaborator with Voyager in the restructuring process. The bottom line of their plan is to integrate live trading and issue a recovery token to customers to retain them on the platform.
A snippet of the plan sought to "provide major additional upside to unsecured creditors and incentivize customer retention through a 'recovery token' in addition to VGX Tokens. Give everyone a shot at full, or even above 100%+ recovery."
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