Voyager Digital Bankruptcy and Bitcoin Custody Cases — CustodyStress

Documented Bitcoin custody cases associated with Voyager Digital in the Bitcoin Custody Incident Archive. Voyager filed for bankruptcy in July 2022 following the collapse of Three Arrows Capital, to which Voyager had significant unsecured lending exposure.

The most frequently documented recovery path in these cases is Bankruptcy Claims Process (2 of 2 cases). 50% of determinate cases resulted in some form of access recovery.

Voyager Digital was a publicly traded cryptocurrency brokerage platform offering commission-free trading and interest-bearing accounts. In 2022, Voyager had extended approximately $650 million in unsecured loans to Three Arrows Capital (3AC), a cryptocurrency hedge fund. When 3AC collapsed in June 2022, Voyager was unable to recover the loans. Voyager suspended trading, deposits, and withdrawals on July 1, 2022 and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 5, 2022. The bankruptcy proceeded through several acquisition attempts before ultimately distributing assets to creditors.

Voyager operated as a custodial brokerage. Customer assets were held by Voyager in pooled accounts. Customers held claims against Voyager rather than ownership of specific cryptocurrency. The platform's terms of service specified that in the event of insolvency, customers would be unsecured creditors. This custody structure, combined with the unsecured lending to 3AC, created a direct path from counterparty failure to customer access failure.

Access failed through contagion from the 3AC collapse. Voyager's inability to recover its unsecured 3AC loans created an asset shortfall that made the platform insolvent. The subsequent withdrawal freeze and bankruptcy filing converted customer balances from platform accounts into unsecured creditor claims. Distributions were made through the bankruptcy process, with customers recovering a portion of their assets in a combination of cryptocurrency and cash.

Archive cases involving Voyager document individual access failures associated with the bankruptcy. The archive documents custody structure failures — the primary failure mode is the conversion of customer balances to unsecured creditor claims through the bankruptcy mechanism.