BlockFi's CEO cashed out more than $9 million from the crypto platform last year to pay US taxes
- BlockFi CEO Zac Prince withdrew over $9 million last year from his own account with the company.
- He cashed out the millions in order to pay US federal and state taxes, according to a company presentation.
Bankrupt crypto lender BlockFi's CEO made withdrawals worth many millions of dollars from his own account with the company last year to pay US taxes.
Zac Prince pulled as much as $9.2 million in April 2022 and another $1.36 million in August, the Block reported. The BlockFi chief used the first withdrawal to pay US federal and state taxes, according to a BlockFi presentation dated January 9.
Prince's transactions are reflected in data given in the presentation, which provides stakeholders historical background on the company amid its Chapter 11 proceedings. His assets with the company fell to $3.04 million in April 2022 from $13.15 million the previous month, the figures show.
The holdings dropped further to $1.37 million in August from $2.42 million in July. The declines would have been partly due to a drop in the market value of cryptocurrencies.
BlockFi did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
The bulk of Prince's withdrawals were made some months before BlockFi received a hefty loan from FTX.
FTX threw a lifeline to BlockFi last year, granting the company a $400 million credit line. The loan was meant to help ease BlockFi's financial hardships amid a crypto market crash fueled by the Federal Reserve's fastest interest-rate increases since the early 1980s.
The company ultimately filed for bankruptcy in December following the collapse of FTX, citing exposure to the disgraced crypto exchange.
In its presentation, BlockFi said its management team "deployed their personal assets on the platform, to trade, earn interest, and store different cryptocurrencies under the same terms of service as clients."
The firm told The Block: "Like many BlockFi clients, Zac deployed his own personal assets on BlockFi's platform. Zac kept a substantial portion of his assets on the platform, and the withdrawal he made in April 2022 was to pay U.S. federal and state taxes. Zac and other insiders did not make any withdrawals since October 14, 2022, and no withdrawals of [greater than] 0.2 BTC in value since August 17th."
Correction: January 10, 2023: An earlier version of this story misstated that BlockFi's CEO pulled funds from the company after it got a loan from FTX. The withdrawal happened before the loan.