FTX Closed Acquisition of Liquid Exchange a Few Days Late

The news came to light in an email to Liquid's shareholders.

By Lavender Au

May 2, 2022 at 6:14 p.m. UTC

Updated May 2, 2022 at 6:22 p.m. UTC

Liquid CEO Mike Kayamori (Photo: World Economic Forum) — A delay in paying shareholders “shows that the existing international wire transfer [system] is fundamentally broken,” Liquid CEO Mike Kayamori said. (Photo: World Economic Forum)

Lavender Au

Lavender Au is a CoinDesk reporter with a focus on regulation in Asia. She holds BTC, ETH, NEAR, KSM and SAITO.

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FTX completed the acquisition of Japanese crypto exchange Liquid on April 4, a few days after the deal had been scheduled to close, according to an email to Liquid shareholders from CEO Mike Kayamori that was obtained by CoinDesk.

The deal, which was first announced in February, was expected to close by the end of March, according to an earlier blog post by Liquid.
Instead, Kayamori wrote in the letter sent Sunday from the Bahamas, where crypto exchange FTX is based and where it co-hosted last week’s Crypto Bahamas conference, that the acquisition closed on April 4.
Kayamori had to wait until the beginning of May to thank shareholders for their support, he wrote, because some of them hadn't received their consideration.
“There were some human errors,” Kayamori explained, but the delay “shows that the existing international wire transfer [system] is fundamentally broken and crypto (stablecoins) can solve this problem.”
Kayamori’s email says that Liquid’s operations will be renamed FTX Japan and FTX Singapore once the company obtains a license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
Liquid is being sued for wrongful termination by a former employee who alleges the Singapore subsidiary made her a “scapegoat” after it suffered a $90 million breach last year.
FTX, which extended Liquid a $120 million loan in the wake of the hack before agreeing to buy the exchange outright, hasn't disclosed how it much paid to purchase Liquid.

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