Voyager Sale to FTX Hits a Snag

Yesterday I saw an article discussing the drama/snag that has hit the Voyager deal. This deal was supposed to close officially on Wednesday but now that might be up in the air. Two different Texas authorities, the Texas State Securities Board (TSSB) and the Texas Department of Banking (DOB), have filed notice that they oppose the Voyager Digital disclosure statement as they claim the methodology used to calculate the coin prices is not disclosed.

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Since Texas has been extremely supportive of crypto and blockchain technology even allowing State Chartered banks to hold Bitcoin themselves this did not make the most sense. However, the more that I looked into it the more it started to make sense to me. An underlying issue that both Voyager and FTX face is that neither is licensed to operate in Texas with Voyager already facing large fines from not only Texas but other states as well. This follows in the same vein as when the SSB and DOB along with Vermont's Department of Financial Regulation objected to Celsius selling off some of its stablecoin holdings.

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While the state wanting to see how the company concluded that creditors might get 70% of their holdings returned to them is the biggest thing objection there was another key issue that I have not seen anyone yet address. Voyager has been sent cease and desist letters from multiple states for their Voyager Earn Program and while FTX.US does not have an Earn program FTX does and through the FTX.US app, you can move your funds to the FTX earn platform despite not being licensed in the US. In the argument for this objection, the Director of TSSB documented how he was able to do it on his phone when it was brought to his attention.

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On the plus side, FTX has since come out and said that they have been in talks with Texas along with other states about their programs since if you run afoul of Texas financial laws it is highly highly likely you will with many other states. If you are wondering why Texas would throw a wrench like this into the proceeding it is highly likely that FTX was either not budging on something or was dragging its feet. Rather than open up a whole new court case against them, it was easier to tack this on to the Voyager one. I would be shocked if this was not resolved quickly as Texas wants to maintain its pro-crypto outlook and FTX doesn't want to be bogged down by increasing court fees. Ideally, they will just license FTX.US for their Earn program but as of now, that is unclear.