FTX logo with crypto coins with 100 Dollar bill are displayed for illustration. FTX has filed for bankruptcy in the US, seeking court protection as it looks for a way to return money to users.
Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Beleaguered cryptocurrency exchange FTX may have more than 1 million creditors, according to a new bankruptcy filing, hinting at the huge impact of its collapse on crypto traders.
Last week, when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, FTX indicated that it had more than 100,000 creditors with claims in the case.
But in an updated filing Tuesday, lawyers for the company said: “In fact, there could be more than one million creditors in these Chapter 11 Cases.”
Typically in such cases, debtors are required to provide a list of the names and addresses of the top 20 unsecured creditors, the lawyers said. However, given the scale of its debts, the group instead intends to file a list of the 50 largest creditors on or before Friday.
Five new independent directors have been appointed at each of FTX’s main parent companies, according to the filing, including the former Delaware district judge, Joseph J. Farnan, who will serve as lead independent director.
Over the past 72 hours, FTX has been in contact with “dozens” of regulators in the U.S. and overseas, the company’s lawyers wrote. These include the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
This year has seen a spate of crypto firms, including Celsius and Voyager Digital, fail as they contend with a slump in digital asset prices and ensuing liquidity issues.
In earlier bankruptcy cases, traders on these platforms have been designated “unsecured creditors,” meaning they’ll likely be at the back of a long queue of entities seeking repayment, from suppliers to employees.
Before its collapse, FTX offered amateur and professional traders spot crypto investing as well as more complex derivatives trades. At its peak, the platform was valued by investors at $32 billion and had more than 1 million users. The company’s failure has had a chilling effect on the industry, with investors selling their positions and moving funds off exchanges.
On Monday, the CEOs of Binance and Crypto.com sought to reassure investors about their businesses’ financial health. Binance’s Changpeng Zhao said his exchange had only seen a minor increase in withdrawals, while Crypto.com chief Kris Marszalek said his firm had a “tremendously strong balance sheet.”
Commingling of client funds
FTX entered bankruptcy Friday as concerns over its financial health led to a surge in withdrawals and a plunge in the value of its native FTT token. Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s founder, stepped aside as CEO and was replaced by John J. Ray III.
FTX initially turned to Binance for a rescue deal, but this fell apart when Binance backed out citing reports of mishandled customer funds and alleged U.S. government probes into FTX. Over the weekend, FTX was hit with an apparent cyberattack resulting in the theft of more than $400 million worth of tokens.
“FTX faced a severe liquidity crisis that necessitated the filing of these cases on an emergency basis last Friday,” lawyers wrote in the filing Tuesday. “Questions arose about Mr. Bankman-Fried’s leadership and the handling of FTX’s complex array of assets and businesses under his direction.”
CNBC reported Sunday that Alameda Research, FTX’s sister company, had borrowed billions in customer funds from the exchange to ensure it had enough liquidity on hand to process withdrawals.
In general, mixing customer funds with counterparties and trading them without explicit consent is illegal, according to U.S. securities law. It also violates FTX’s terms of service.
Bankman-Fried declined to comment on allegations but said the company’s recent bankruptcy filing was the result of issues with a leveraged trading position.
“I think it’s increasingly clear, even at a basic level, that this kind of intermingling of interests between the market maker and the exchange is highly unethical,” Jamie Burke CEO and founder of Web3-focused venture capital firm Outlier Ventures, told CNBC.
In a cryptic Twitter thread this week, Bankman-Fried wrote the word “What” followed by the letters “H,” “A,” “P,” “P,” “E,” “N,” “E,” “D,” in intermittent tweets.
He finished the thread Tuesday with the sentence: “10) [NOT LEGAL ADVICE. NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE. THIS IS ALL AS I REMEMBER IT, BUT MY MEMORY MIGHT BE FAULTY IN PARTS.]”
TikTok’s grip on the short-form video market is tightening, and the world’s biggest tech platforms are racing to catch up.
Since launching globally in 2016, ByteDance-owned TikTok has amassed over 1.12 billion monthly active users worldwide, according to Backlinko. American users spend an average of 108 minutes per day on the app, according to Apptoptia.
TikTok’s success has reshaped the social media landscape, forcing competitors like Meta and Google to pivot their strategies around short-form video. But so far, experts say that none have matched TikTok’s algorithmic precision.
“It is the center of the internet for young people,” said Jasmine Enberg, vice president and principal analyst at Emarketer. “It’s where they go for entertainment, news, trends, even shopping. TikTok sets the tone for everyone else.”
Platforms like Meta‘s Instagram Reels and Google’s YouTube Shorts have expanded aggressively, launching new features, creator tools and even considering separate apps just to compete. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn, traditionally a professional networking site, is the latest to experiment with TikTok-style feeds. But with TikTok continuing to evolve, adding features like e-commerce integrations and longer videos, the question remains whether rivals can keep up.
“I’m scrolling every single day. I doom scroll all the time,” said TikTok content creator Alyssa McKay.
But there may a dark side to this growth.
As short-form content consumption soars, experts warn about shrinking attention spans and rising mental-health concerns, particularly among younger users. Researchers like Dr. Yann Poncin, associate professor at the Child Study Center at Yale University, point to disrupted sleep patterns and increased anxiety levels tied to endless scrolling habits.
“Infinite scrolling and short-form video are designed to capture your attention in short bursts,” Dr. Poncin said. “In the past, entertainment was about taking you on a journey through a show or story. Now, it’s about locking you in for just a few seconds, just enough to feed you the next thing the algorithm knows you’ll like.”
Despite sky-high engagement, monetizing short videos remains an uphill battle. Unlike long-form YouTube content, where ads can be inserted throughout, short clips offer limited space for advertisers. Creators, too, are feeling the squeeze.
“It’s never been easier to go viral,” said Enberg. “But it’s never been harder to turn that virality into a sustainable business.”
Last year, TikTok generated an estimated $23.6 billion in ad revenues, according to Oberlo, but even with this growth, many creators still make just a few dollars per million views. YouTube Shorts pays roughly four cents per 1,000 views, which is less than its long-form counterpart. Meanwhile, Instagram has leaned into brand partnerships and emerging tools like “Trial Reels,” which allow creators to experiment with content by initially sharing videos only with non-followers, giving them a low-risk way to test new formats or ideas before deciding whether to share with their full audience. But Meta told CNBC that monetizing Reels remains a work in progress.
While lawmakers scrutinize TikTok’s Chinese ownership and explore potential bans, competitors see a window of opportunity. Meta and YouTube are poised to capture up to 50% of reallocated ad dollars if TikTok faces restrictions in the U.S., according to eMarketer.
Watch the video to understand how TikTok’s rise sparked a short form video race.
The X logo appears on a phone, and the xAI logo is displayed on a laptop in Krakow, Poland, on April 1, 2025. (Photo by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Elon Musk‘s xAI Holdings is in discussions with investors to raise about $20 billion, Bloomberg News reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The funding would value the company at over $120 billion, according to the report.
Musk was looking to assign “proper value” to xAI, sources told CNBC’s David Faber earlier this month. The remarks were made during a call with xAI investors, sources familiar with the matter told Faber. The Tesla CEO at that time didn’t explicitly mention any upcoming funding round, but the sources suggested xAI was preparing for a substantial capital raise in the near future.
The funding amount could be more than $20 billion as the exact figure had not been decided, the Bloomberg report added.
Artificial intelligence startup xAI didn’t immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment outside of U.S. business hours.
The AI firm last month acquired X in an all-stock deal that valued xAI at $80 billion and the social media platform at $33 billion.
“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk said on X, announcing the deal. “This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach.”
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Alphabet‘s stock gained 3% Friday after signaling strong growth in its search and advertising businesses amid a competitive artificial intelligence environment and uncertain macro backdrop.
“GOOGL‘s pace of GenAI product roll-out is accelerating with multiple encouraging signals,” wrote Morgan Stanley‘s Brian Nowak. “Macro uncertainty still exists but we remain [overweight] given GOOGL’s still strong relative position and improving pace of GenAI enabled product roll-out.”
The search giant posted earnings of $2.81 per share on $90.23 billion in revenues. That topped the $89.12 billion in sales and $2.01 in EPS expected by LSEG analysts. Revenues grew 12% year-over-year and ahead of the 10% anticipated by Wall Street.
Net income rose 46% to $34.54 billion, or $2.81 per share. That’s up from $23.66 billion, or $1.89 per share, in the year-ago period. Alphabet said the figure included $8 billion in unrealized gains on its nonmarketable equity securities connected to its investment in a private company.
Adjusted earnings, excluding that gain, were $2.27 per share, according to LSEG, and topped analyst expectations.
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Alphabet shares have pulled back about 16% this year as it battles volatility spurred by mounting trade war fears and worries that President Donald Trump‘s tariffs could crush the global economy. That would make it more difficult for Alphabet to potentially acquire infrastructure for data centers powering AI models as it faces off against competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic to develop largely language models.
During Thursday’s call with investors, Alphabet suggested that it’s too soon to tally the total impact of tariffs. However, Google’s business chief Philipp Schindler said that ending the de minimis trade exemption in May, which created a loophole benefitting many Chinese e-commerce retailers, could create a “slight headwind” for the company’s ads business, specifically in the Asia-Pacific region. The loophole allows shipments under $800 to come into the U.S. duty-free.
Despite this backdrop, Alphabet showed steady growth in its advertising and search business, reporting $66.89 billion in revenues for its advertising unit. That reflected 8.5% growth from the year-ago period. The company reported $8.93 billion in advertising revenue for its YouTube business, shy of an $8.97 billion estimate from StreetAccount.
Alphabet’s “Search and other” unit rose 9.8% to $50.7 billion, up from $46.16 billion last year. The company said that its AI Overviews tool used in its Google search results page has accumulated 1.5 billion monthly users from a billion in October.
Bank of America analyst Justin Post said that Wall Street is underestimating the upside potential and “monetization ramp” from this tool and cloud demand fueled by AI.
“The strong 1Q search performance, along with constructive comments on Gemini [large language model] performance and [AI Overviews] adoption could help alleviate some investor concerns on AI competition,” Post wrote in a note.