Bankruptcy Claim
A creditor's legal claim in a failed company's court process, which determines who gets paid, how much, and in what order.
When a custodial firm fails, its assets are gathered into an estate and claims are ranked, with secured creditors and administrative expenses ahead of unsecured creditors, and equity holders last. Exchange and lending customers frequently rank as unsecured creditors, particularly where assets were pooled or where terms transferred title. In United States proceedings, claims are typically valued in dollars as of the petition date, so a claimant's recovery is fixed to that valuation and does not rise if the asset's price rises during the case. Cases run for years, and claims are often sold in a secondary market at a discount to holders who prefer certainty and speed.
En pratique
Because claims are dollarized at the petition date, a customer whose coins were held by a failed platform may receive a cash distribution reflecting that earlier valuation rather than the coins themselves.
Le malentendu courant
That bankruptcy returns your coins, when claims are usually converted to a dollar amount at the case's start and paid in cash, making the asset's later price irrelevant to the recovery.