In a disappointing turn of events for Voyager Digital, Binance.US has terminated its $1B deal to purchase the assets of the struggling cryptocurrency lender. This marks the second time a deal to acquire Voyager’s assets has failed to complete.
1/ Today we received a letter from https://t.co/yG7Airmib5 terminating the asset purchase agreement. While this development is disappointing, our chapter 11 plan allows for direct distribution of cash and crypto to customers (a “toggle option”) via the Voyager platform.
— Voyager (@investvoyager) April 25, 2023
Binance.US did not state a specific reason for pulling out of the deal, but it did highlight the hostile and uncertain regulatory climate in the United States. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice had opposed Binance’s attempt to purchase Voyager’s assets. Moreover, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued Binance, alleging that the firm solicited US customers in contravention of federal trading laws.
https://t.co/AZwoBOgsqS has made the difficult decision to exercise its right to terminate the asset purchase agreement with Voyager.
While our hope throughout this process was to help Voyager's customers access their crypto in kind, the hostile and uncertain regulatory climate…
— Binance.US 🇺🇸 (@BinanceUS) April 25, 2023
Impact On Voyager Customers
The termination of the deal could be another blow to Voyager customers who have already witnessed the failure of two asset purchase agreements. Before Binance.US, FTX.US had won the bid in October 2022 to purchase Voyager’s assets. However, the deal fell through following FTX’s collapse and eventual bankruptcy in November 2022. Voyager has assured its customers that it will now move swiftly to return value to customers via direct distributions.
Voyager has stated that the next course of action would be to directly reimburse customers whose assets were frozen in July 2022, based on its Chapter 11 plan. The distressed cryptocurrency lender has also mandated that Binance will have to permanently destroy all Voyager customer information and close any accounts set up with such information based on the terms set in the asset purchase deal.
