Hedge funds have billions of dollars stuck on failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX and could face years of waiting to recover anything at all from a marketplace they once believed to be one of the industry’s most reliable bets.

In a situation reminiscent of Lehman Brothers in 2008, which left billions of dollars of hedge funds’ assets trapped for years, investors who traded on the Bahamas-based exchange have found themselves among the thousands of creditors in a highly complex bankruptcy.

The sudden failure this month of FTX, valued at $32bn this year, has shocked investors who backed it and traders who used it. Legal filings on Sunday revealed that FTX owes its 50 largest creditors, likely to include a wide variety of hedge funds, more traditional asset managers and other traders, more than $3bn.