The venture capital arm of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto trading firm Alameda Research had illiquid investments worth more than $5.4bn spread across nearly 500 companies, newly published documents have revealed.
The venture investments controlled by Bankman-Fried appears to have covered everything from metaverse gaming companies, to crypto mining, lending and wallet development, as well as unrelated industries like betting, artificial intelligence (AI), publishing, and online banking.
The investments in the 500 companies were held by 10 different holding companies, all affiliated with Alameda Research and FTX, and controlled by Sam Bankman-Fried, the documents showed.
The documents were first published by the Financial Times in an article on Tuesday.
Investments in SpaceX, Sequoia Capital and others
Among the specific companies mentioned in the documents were the venture capital giant Sequoia Capital, Anthony Scaramucci’s firm SkyBridge Capital, Elon Musk’s space exploration company SpaceX, and AI researcher Anthropic, to name just a few.
According to article, the screenshots were taken from an excel spreadsheet from early November. That was around the same time as Bankman-Fried was seeking funding to keep his firm afloat amid an intensifying run on deposits from FTX customers.
Per FT, citing “a person familiar with the rescue effort,” the spreadsheets were prepared by FTX in an attempt to offer the investments as collateral for potential new credit lines from investors.
Blurred lines between FTX and Alameda
The FT article further pointed out that the investment portfolio that has now been made public could help investigators find out whether the Bankman-Fried’s trading and exchange businesses were separate entities or not.
Bankman-Fried has made a point out of saying that there was a clear distinction between FTX the exchange, and Alameda’s trading activities. As previously reported, however, FTX has in the past lent billions of dollars in user funds to Alameda Research to fund risky bets.
Bankman-Fried has in an earlier interview admitted that he was involved in Alameda’s venture capital business, but has so far refused to answer questions about any misuse of FTX customer funds.
Credit: Source link
