Crypto Collapse History: FTX, LUNA, Celsius and What Users Got Back

Most of the big crypto collapses happened in 2022. Terra/LUNA collapsed in May, and the US Justice Department puts investor losses above $40 billion. Celsius, Voyager and Three Arrows Capital (3AC) froze withdrawals or went into liquidation in June and July, and FTX filed for bankruptcy in November after, according to the DOJ, more than $8 billion was taken from its customers. As of 2026-10-23 recoveries vary widely: FTX international customers have received 105% cumulatively, BlockFi 100%, Celsius about 72.1%, and for Terra we found no notice of any actual distribution.

A bankruptcy payout "above 100%" is usually measured against the dollar value on the day of the filing, not against the coins you held. Below are 8 collapses with court documents, regulator records or major-outlet coverage: when each happened, what users lost, what they have recovered so far (with the document date), the legal outcome, and what to take from it (checked 2026-10-23).

Quick answer

• Highest recoveries: after FTX's fifth distribution on 2026-07-31, international customer claims are at 105% cumulative and convenience claims at 120%; BlockFi announced 100% of allowed dollar claims in July 2024; Gemini Earn users got their coins back in kind in 2024.
• Partial recoveries: Celsius is at about 72.1% after its fourth distribution; Voyager paid about 36% at first, then added its settlement with FTX; 3AC's liquidators estimated a 45.74% recovery in December 2023.
• Nothing recovered yet: Terra's wind-down has a claims portal, but we found no notice of an actual distribution; Hong Kong's JPEX case is still in criminal proceedings with no public compensation scheme.
• Legal outcomes: FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years; Terraform founder Do Kwon pleaded guilty and got 15 years; Celsius founder Alex Mashinsky pleaded guilty and got 12 years; the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) issued 9-year prohibition orders against 3AC's two founders.

The 8 collapses at a glance

Sources (checked 2026-10-23): FTX FTX fifth distribution notice (2026-07-17), FTX plan effective date (2024-12-16), FTX first distribution (2025-02-18), The Block plan confirmation (2024-10-07), The Block petition-date pricing, US DOJ (2024-03-28), CoinDesk appeal (2026-06-12); Terra US DOJ guilty plea (Aug 2025), US DOJ (2025-12-11), SEC judgment page, The Block citing Reuters (Sep 2024), The Block claims portal (2025-03-28); Celsius fourth distribution notice, Doc 8314 (2026-01-22), FTC complaint (Jul 2023), CoinDesk (2025-05-08); 3AC The Block (2023-12-21), liquidators' 8th distribution notice (2026-06-01), MAS prohibition orders; Voyager FTC (Oct 2023), FTC (Jun 2025), The Block (2023-05-17), Cointelegraph citing the 2024-04-09 court filing; Genesis / Gemini Earn CoinDesk (2023-01-20), Gemini (2024-05-29), NY DFS, The Block SEC penalty, The Block NY settlement (2024-02-28); BlockFi CoinDesk (2022-11-28), The Block (Jul 2024), CoinDesk (2025-04-02), CoinDesk (2023-09-29), SEC 2022-26; JPEX SFC warning (2023-09-13), SFC statement (2023-09-20), The Standard (2025-11-05). "User losses" mean different things in each case (losses found by the DOJ, amounts alleged in an FTC complaint, total claims filed), so they can't be added up or compared directly; each "recovered" figure follows that case's own method.

What happened in each case

FTX (Nov 2022): over 100% repaid in dollar terms

FTX halted withdrawals on 2022-11-08 and filed for Chapter 11 in Delaware on 11-11. The US Justice Department says founder Sam Bankman-Fried took more than $8 billion from customers. A jury convicted him on 7 counts on 2023-11-02, and on 2024-03-28 he was sentenced to 25 years with $11 billion in forfeiture. The Second Circuit upheld the conviction on 2026-06-12, and he has since petitioned the US Supreme Court.

On the bankruptcy side, the plan was confirmed on 2024-10-07, took effect on 2025-01-03, and the first distribution began on 2025-02-18. The Block reported that the plan converts crypto claims into their dollar value on the 2022-11-11 petition date. After the fifth distribution of about $900 million on 2026-07-31, international customers (Class 5A) are at 105% cumulative, US customers (Class 5B) at 105%, general unsecured and loan claims at 103%, and convenience claims at 120%. Those percentages are of the petition-date dollar value, when BTC was about $16,871.

Terra/LUNA (May 2022): the biggest loss, the least recovered

After the algorithmic stablecoin UST lost its peg, LUNA went to zero within days. The US Justice Department says the fraud cost investors more than $40 billion. In the SEC's civil case, the 2024-06-12 judgment ordered Terraform to pay about $4.47 billion (disgorgement, interest and penalty) and Do Kwon to transfer at least $204 million to the bankruptcy estate; the SEC agreed that investors are paid first. Do Kwon pleaded guilty in the Southern District of New York in August 2025 and was sentenced to 15 years on 2025-12-11.

Terraform filed for bankruptcy on 2024-01-21, and its wind-down plan was approved in September 2024 with an estimate of $184.5 million to $442.2 million for stakeholders. A claims portal opened on 2025-03-31, but as of the check date we found no document showing an actual distribution or a published recovery rate, so the table says "not found". The estate's administrator has also sued several trading firms; those are allegations a court has not ruled on.

Celsius (Jun 2022): a lending platform, about 70% back

Celsius halted withdrawals, swaps and transfers on 2022-06-12; the FTC complaint says about $4.7 billion in crypto became inaccessible. It filed for bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York on 2022-07-13. The plan took effect on 2024-01-31 and has paid out in four rounds. The fourth distribution notice filed with the court on 2026-01-22 says each eligible creditor will have received about 72.1% cumulatively, at the value on the 2022-07-13 petition date, with the fourth round contributing 7.2% of that.

Founder Alex Mashinsky pleaded guilty on 2024-12-03 (commodities fraud and securities fraud) and was sentenced to 12 years on 2025-05-08. The FTC's $4.7 billion judgment against Celsius the company is suspended so that the remaining assets go back to users through the bankruptcy first.

Three Arrows Capital (Jun 2022): one fund, many platforms hit

3AC was a hedge fund that ordinary users had no accounts with, but it borrowed from many platforms that they did use. A British Virgin Islands court ordered its liquidation on 2022-06-27, with Teneo as liquidator. The Block reported 154 claims totalling about $3.4 billion and a liquidator estimate of 45.74% recovery in December 2023. The liquidators announced on 2026-06-01 that an 8th interim dividend would be paid on or after 2026-07-10; the notice does not state a cumulative percentage.

MAS found that the two founders, Zhu Su and Kyle Davies, failed to discharge their duties as directors and that the firm had given false information, and issued 9-year prohibition orders effective 2023-09-13.

Voyager (Jul 2022): pulled down by the 3AC default

After 3AC failed to repay a loan of 15,250 BTC and $350 million USDC, Voyager suspended trading and withdrawals on 2022-07-01 and filed for bankruptcy on 07-05. The FTC complaint says consumers lost more than $1 billion in crypto; the former CEO had written to customers that their funds were "as safe with us as at a bank". When the liquidation plan started in May 2023, The Block reported users would initially recover about 36%. A 2024-04-09 court filing said the settlement with FTX, about $450 million, came to roughly 25% of aggregate claims, with more from 3AC and D&O insurance (reported by Cointelegraph). We found no cumulative percentage published by the plan administrator.

The FTC settled with Voyager in October 2023, banning it from handling consumer assets; the former CEO settled with the FTC in June 2025, agreeing to pay $2.8 million and accept a ban.

FTX dominoes: BlockFi and Genesis / Gemini Earn

BlockFi had already settled with the SEC and states for $100 million in February 2022 over its unregistered interest accounts. After FTX fell it paused withdrawals and filed for bankruptcy in New Jersey on 2022-11-28. In July 2024, after selling its claims against FTX, the plan administrator announced that all allowed customer claims could receive 100% of their petition-date dollar value; CoinDesk reported on 2025-04-02 that about 97% of US clients had been paid in full but only 43% of non-US clients, and the rest had not come forward to claim.

Gemini Earn lent users' coins to Genesis for interest. Genesis halted withdrawals in November 2022, leaving about $900 million stuck, and filed for bankruptcy on 2023-01-19. Gemini said on 2024-05-29 that Earn users had received about $2.18 billion in kind, about 97% of what they were owed, and the NY Department of Financial Services said the rest followed in June 2024. Because users got their coins back, price gains while they waited went to them; FTX and Celsius paid in dollar terms. On the regulatory side, the SEC fined Genesis $21 million and NY DFS fined Gemini $37 million.

JPEX (Sep 2023): an unlicensed platform

Hong Kong's SFC warned on 2023-09-13 that JPEX was promoting itself to Hong Kong residents through influencers and money changers, that none of its entities held or had applied for a licence, and that it had been on the SFC's Alert List since 2022-07-08. The SFC suspected fraud and referred the case to the police. The Standard reported that Hong Kong police charged 16 people on 2025-11-05, with charges including conspiracy to defraud, in a case involving about HK$1.616 billion and 2,636 complainants, and froze about HK$228 million in assets. There is no verdict and no public compensation scheme. How to spot this kind of setup in advance: crypto signal-group and KOL scam warning.

What about Mt. Gox?

Mt. Gox failed after a 2014 theft, so it sits in exchange hacks and compensation history. Latest update: the rehabilitation trustee announced on 2026-10-16 that, with court permission, the repayment deadline moves from 2026-10-31 to 2027-10-31, because many creditors still have not completed the steps to receive payment.

Patterns across the 8 cases

• Most were platforms that lent your coins out: Celsius, Voyager, BlockFi and Gemini Earn were yield or lending products. Users' coins were lent to firms like 3AC and Alameda, and when those failed the losses chained through.
• Withdrawals stop first, bankruptcy follows: FTX, Celsius, Voyager, BlockFi and Genesis all paused withdrawals first and filed for bankruptcy days to months later.
• Bankruptcy is priced in dollars: FTX, Celsius and BlockFi all value claims at the petition-date dollar price. BTC got priced near its 2022 lows, and any rise after that is not yours.
• It takes years: FTX took about 2 years 3 months from filing to first distribution; Celsius about 1 year 7 months; Terra, more than 4 years on, has shown no distribution.
• Unlicensed platforms are the hardest to recover from: JPEX was on no licence list. After it failed, the only route was a criminal case, with no bankruptcy plan to distribute from.

You can't control whether a platform fails; you can control how much you keep on it that day and whether it sits in a lending product.

Worked example: the same $10,000 on different platforms

Suppose you had $10,000 of assets on each platform on the day it failed. Using each case's current cumulative rate (ignoring tax, FX and claim fees):

Now look at it in BTC: if you had 1 BTC on FTX in November 2022, your claim was about $16,871, and 105% of that is about $17,715 in cash, not 1 BTC. Gemini Earn users got their original coins back.

"More than 100% back" does not mean no loss: when claims are priced in petition-date dollars, the price gains during the wait are not yours. Assets you don't trade are safer from a platform failure in a wallet you control.

What does this have to do with rebates?

An exchange's automatic rebate goes back into your exchange account, next to your trading funds, and gets frozen with them if the platform fails. Fee Otter's extra rebate settles daily and, when you request it, is sent as on-chain BEP20 USDT to an address you bound yourself: minimum 1 USDT per payout, 0.015 USDT network fee paid by the user, and every payout is visible on BscScan. Withdraw your rebates regularly and they don't share the platform risk with your trading funds. Whether the rebate platform itself is safe: is a crypto fee rebate safe.

What to take from these cases

1. Read the proof of reserves, and what it leaves out: a proof of reserves shows whether assets covered user liabilities at the moment of the snapshot. Check whether liabilities are included and who did the verification. It is not deposit insurance and it does not stop misuse of funds. Comparison: exchange proof of reserves compared.
2. Self-custody what you don't trade: coins on a platform become a bankruptcy claim when it fails. Move long-term holdings to a wallet you control; withdrawal fees by network are in USDT withdrawal fee comparison.
3. Spread funds across two or three platforms, and skip unknown ones: when one pauses withdrawals, another still works. Before opening an account, check the regulator's licence list and warning list; JPEX was on the SFC's Alert List more than a year before it failed. Licences by country: crypto exchange licences by country; for the EU: MiCA-licensed exchanges.
4. Set up the rebate before you trade: sign up with our referral code and bind your UID on the Fee Otter rebate platform; the rebate only counts trades after binding. On BingX, signing up with the code gives 45% automatically, all paid by BingX, with no UID binding needed.

To cut trading costs and have rebates land in your own wallet regularly, sign up with our referral code and bind Fee Otter first. If a withdrawal gets stuck, see account frozen or withdrawal stuck; for how rebates settle, see how fee rebates are settled.

Service regions

Which process applies after a failure depends on where the platform is set up: FTX, Celsius, Voyager, BlockFi and Genesis went through US bankruptcy courts, 3AC is in liquidation in the British Virgin Islands, JPEX is under criminal investigation by Hong Kong police, and Mt. Gox is in civil rehabilitation in Japan. Before using an offshore exchange, check that your region is within its service area and read which country's law and courts its user agreement names.

Risk notice

This article summarises public records. It is not a rating of, or a guarantee about, any platform's safety. Bankruptcy recovery rates change with later distributions, so rely on each case's latest court documents and administrator notices. A charge or a settlement is not a court finding of fact; we use the wording of each document. Crypto assets can be lost entirely, so only keep funds you can afford to lose on a trading platform.

FAQ

How much did FTX customers get back?

After the fifth distribution on 2026-07-31, international customer claims are at 105% cumulative, US customers at 105% and convenience claims at 120%, all measured against the dollar value on the 2022-11-11 petition date. More distributions may follow, with dates announced by the FTX Recovery Trust.

How much has Celsius repaid?

Per the fourth distribution notice filed with the court on 2026-01-22, about 72.1% cumulatively for each eligible creditor, at the value on the 2022-07-13 petition date.

Can LUNA holders get anything back?

Terraform's wind-down plan has a claims process that opened on 2025-03-31, and the plan estimated $184.5 million to $442.2 million for stakeholders, small next to the more than $40 billion in losses the DOJ cites. As of 2026-10-23 we found no notice of an actual distribution.

If bankruptcy repays more than 100%, why do people still feel they lost?

Because claims are valued in dollars on the petition date. BTC was about $16,871 when FTX filed, so 105% is based on that price, and any rise after that does not belong to creditors. Gemini Earn's in-kind repayment is one of the few exceptions.

How do I avoid the next collapse?

Self-custody what you don't trade, spread funds across two or three platforms, check whether a proof of reserves includes liabilities, only use platforms you can find on a regulator's list, and stay away from lending products that promise high fixed yields.

Events, amounts and recovery rates are compiled from court documents, bankruptcy administrator notices, the US DOJ, SEC, FTC, MAS, Hong Kong's SFC, and reporting by CoinDesk, The Block and other major outlets, checked 2026-10-23; the latest version of each original source prevails. Worked examples are hypothetical and ignore tax, FX and claim fees. This article is for information only and is not investment or legal advice.