The collapse in cryptocurrency prices last year forced a procession of major firms into bankruptcy, triggering a government crackdown and erasing the savings of millions of inexperienced investors. But for a small group of corporate turnaround specialists, crypto’s implosion has become a financial bonanza, the New York Times reported. Lawyers, accountants, consultants, cryptocurrency analysts and other professionals have racked up more than $700 million in fees since last year from the bankruptcies of five major crypto firms, including the digital currency exchange FTX, according to a New York Times analysis of court records. That sum is likely to grow significantly as the cases unfold over the coming months. Large fees are common in corporate bankruptcies, which require complex and time-intensive legal work to untangle. But in the crypto world, the mounting fees have sparked widespread outrage because many of the people owed money are amateur traders who lost their personal savings, rather than corporations with the ability to weather a financial crisis. Lawyers and other bankruptcy professionals argue that they are charging market rates for difficult work that will ultimately help recover the money that crypto investors lost. In the FTX case, Sullivan & Cromwell has said that it has scraped together more than $7 billion in assets, though it’s unclear how much of that total will go back to creditors. A spokesman for FTX’s new management said the bankruptcy was “extraordinary in almost every conceivable way,” requiring professionals to recreate records from scratch and track down missing funds. Andrew Dietderich, a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell, said in a statement that the lack of clear crypto regulations made the cases more complex and time-consuming, driving up costs.
