FTX and the FTX Collapse

FTX was a centralized crypto exchange founded in 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried and headquartered in the Bahamas. There was also a US exchange FTX US. FTX was one of largest crypto exchanges and one of the most "blue-chip". It played a leading role in bail-outs of other crypto firms during 2022 e.g. Voyager Digital. On 11 Nov 2022, FTX, FTX US and other a hundred associated entities filed for bankruptcy.

Notes

FTX Investors

Source from a post on twitter on November 12 2022. Looks like it is an extract from FactSet.

FTX balance sheet at time of bankruptcy

Source: https://www.ft.com/content/0c2a55b6-d34c-4685-8a8d-3c9628f1f185 with full details in https://www.ft.com/content/f05fe9f8-ca0a-48d5-8ef2-7a4d813af558

The vast majority of FTX Trading’s recorded assets are either illiquid venture capital investments or crypto tokens that are not widely traded, according to the spreadsheet, which cautions that the figures “are rough values, and could be slightly off; there is also obviously a chance of typos etc. They also change a bit over time as trades happen.”

The company’s biggest asset as of Thursday was $2.2bn worth of a cryptocurrency called Serum. Serum’s total market value was $88mn on Saturday, according to data provider CryptoCompare, suggesting FTX’s holdings would be worth far less if sold into the market. CryptoCompare’s figures take into account the coin’s liquidity.

Deeper dive with comic comments in Levine, Matt. ‘FTX’s Balance Sheet Was Bad’. Bloomberg.Com, 14 November 2022. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-11-14/ftx-s-balance-sheet-was-bad