FTX loses $53K every hour on ‘bankruptcy fees,’ latest filings show More than $118 million in legal and advisory fees were billed to the bankrupt crypto exchange between August and October, amounting to $1.3 million per day.
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3:18 FTX loses $53K every hour on ‘bankruptcy fees,’ latest filings showNEWS Collect article Own this piece of history as an NFT Join us on social networks In the three months ending Oct. 31, defunct crypto exchange FTX has been burning through approximately $53,000 every hour on bankruptcy lawyers and advisers, the latest round of compensation filings show.
Court filings from Dec. 5 to Dec. 16 show that the bankruptcy lawyers have charged at least $118.1 million between Aug. 1 and Oct. 31. Over the 92 days, this amounts to $1.3 million per day or $53,300 per hour.
The largest bill came from the management consulting firm Alvarez and Marshall, which charged $35.8 million for its services for the three months.
Alvarez and Marshall charged a total of $35.8 million in fees to the FTX estate. Source: CourtListener Coming in second place was global law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, which charged $31.8 million for its services. The hourly rate for Sullivan & Cromwell’s services averaged $1,230 per hour.
Sullivan and Cromwell’s services cost FTX creditors $1,230 per hour. Source: CourtListener Global consulting firm AlixPartners charged $13.3 million in the period for professional services relating to forensic investigations. Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan charged $10.4 million in the same period, while several other billings from smaller advisory firms added up to over $26.8 million.
Figures shared by a pseudonymous FTX creditor in a Dec. 17 post on X (formerly Twitter) suggest the total legal fees that have been fully paid since the FTX bankruptcy case began is approximately $350 million.
Related: FTX debtors assess value of crypto claims based on petition date market prices
Meanwhile, an earlier report filed on Dec. 5 by the court-appointed fee examiner, Katherine Stadler, identified “significant areas of concern” with the billings submitted by the larger advisory firms, including Sullivan & Cromwell, Alvarez & Marshall and others between May 1 and June 31.
“The Fee Examiner identified apparently top-heavy staffing, apparently excessive meeting attendance, fees related to non-working travel time, and various technical and procedural deficiencies with respect to some time entries (including vague and lumped entries),” states the report regarding the billings submitted by Alvarez & Marshall.
Advisory firms were criticized for over-billing by the cases’ Fee Examiner. Source: CourtListener Magazine: Terrorism and the Israel-Gaza war have been weaponized to destroy crypto
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Ad MARTIN YOUNG 13 HOURS AGO Daily gas spent on EVM inscriptions surges to record high of $8M Bitcoin is not the only network getting clogged up with Ordinals inscriptions, with weekend activity on EVM chains also spiking.
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3:32 NEWS Collect article Own this piece of history as an NFT Join us on social networks Network transaction fees across all blockchains have spiked over the weekend as the Ordinals inscriptions craze continues to push demand for blockspace — and not just on the Bitcoin network.
Inscriptions on Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains skyrocketed over the weekend, causing a spike in gas fees.
On Dec. 16, gas spent on inscriptions surged to a record high of $8.3 million, according to data from Dune Analytics.
The Avalanche network saw the most gas spent, with more than $5.6 million on that day alone. Aribitrum One was second, with $2.1 million spent on gas for inscriptions.
EVM inscriptions gas expenses. Source: Dune Analytics Over the past 24 hours, 58% of network gas fees on Avalanche and 48% of zkSync Era’s gas fees were spent on EVM inscriptions.
BNB Chain has seen 73% of its transactions over the past 24 hours dedicated to inscriptions.
The situation was so severe on the Arbitrum One network that it caused a 78-minute outage on Dec. 15.
Like Ordinals on the Bitcoin network, EVM inscriptions are essentially information embedded in transaction call data to generate unique nonfungible tokens (NFTs) on-chain.
Meanwhile, the Bitcoin network has also seen a surge in inscriptions over the weekend, increasing block space demand and transaction fees. There are currently almost 280,000 unconfirmed transactions, according to mempool.space.
This has caused Bitcoin transaction fees to spike as high as $37, according to observers, making using the network for its intended purpose — peer-to-peer digital money — unfeasible for many people.
Bitcoin pioneer and cryptographer Adam Back said that Ordinals cannot be stopped, and the high fees “drive adoption of layer-2 and force innovation.”
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