FTX sells LedgerX for $50M to affiliate of Miami-based exchange holding company

FTX announced that it has entered into a purchase agreement with a subsidiary of Miami International Holdings to sell its futures and options exchange and its LedgerX clearing house.

FTX said in a statement that total proceeds from the transaction would be about $50 million. The deal still requires approval from the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. A hearing on the settlement is scheduled for May 4.

FTX stated that it reached an agreement with M7 Holding, a family-owned private equity investment firm based in Akron, Ohio. That firm is a subsidiary of Miami International Holdings, which operates several exchanges in the United States and abroad, including the Minneapolis Grain Exchange and the Bermuda Stock Exchange.

MIAX announces that it has entered into a purchase agreement to acquire LedgerX.

Mark Wetjen, a former CFTC commissioner and later head of regulatory policy and strategy at FTX US, has been on LedgerX's board of directors since 2015.

Wetjen was CEO of MIAX Futures for almost 2 years. pic.twitter.com/zFZtqSou8I

— Wave (@waveninja1) April 25, 2023

bankruptcy court approved the sale of LedgerX and other FTX assets in January after overcoming a challenge by the American trustee and a ad hoc committee of 18 non-US clients. The assets that were auctioned were Embed, LedgerX, FTX Japan and FTX Europe. At that time, 117 parties had expressed interest in those assets.

Related: Swiss court gives FTX the green light to sell its European arm

FTX CEO and Head of Restructuring John Ray III called the sale "an example of our continued efforts to monetize assets to provide recoveries to stakeholders."

FTX.US bought LedgerX in August 2021, allowing it to expand its spot trading services. LedgerX is regulated by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam commented in December:

“The limitations of our authority stopped at [LedgerX]. For the same reasons that we were prevented from bypassing the regulated entity, the other FTX entities were unable to get through LedgerX and potentially take clients' money, which obviously, as a regulator, is the priority."

FTX filed for bankruptcy in November.

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