Over the first two weeks of November, crypto exchange FTX went from leading crypto exchange to a $16 billion bankruptcy - this year's largest so far.
Insiders, customers, the press, and regulators are still piecing together what caused the largest corporate failure in crypto's 14-year history and what such a fallout means as it ripples across the digital assets market.
So far the fallout has meant the loss, freeze, or write down of at least $1.8 billion in funds comprising mostly equity investors from past funding rounds and firms who held money with FTX. It also accounts for the hundreds of millions of dollars in credit, loans, and acquisition financing between FTX, its U.S. subsidiary, Alameda Research, and outside parties.
Here's the damage so far.
Equity Investors
Equity investors stand to lose the most capital from FTX in bankruptcy, but they are also by far the largest investors, a complete write-down of their investment is little more than a scratch to their bottom lines. In a Thursday statement, Temasek disclosed that its $275 million investment in FTX and related businesses, which is the second largest yet reported, accounted for just 0.09% of its $403 billion net portfolio value.
On the other hand, the fallout is worse for smaller crypto-specific equity investors like Paradigm and Multicoin Capital, which also maintained a portion of their funds with the platform.
Firms with funds stuck on FTX
Over the past week dozens of crypto firms have announced they still have funds stuck on FTX's platform Ranging from a couple million to Genesis Trading's $175 million, these companies are now unsecured creditors in FTX's Chapter-11.
It's unclear what the ramifications will be for most of these players. One way to think of it according to Noelle Acheson, author of a crypto and macroeconomics newsletter, is "a domino effect."
"They are going to have clients whose funds are going to be stuck who will also have clients who are going to be stuck and so on," Acheson told Yahoo Finance.
These firms should also be expected to play a larger role during, sometimes in opposition, the fight for how FTX's remaining assets should be divvied.
Comments