FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried’s Parents Bought $121 Million Worth of Bahamas Property
Meanwhile, the failed cryptocurrency company owes billions of dollars to creditors.
It turns out that Sam Bankman-Fried’s failed cryptocurrency exchange was actually a thriving real estate business this whole time.
A new report indicates that Bankman-Fried’s parents, FTX, and senior executives bought at least 19 properties in the Bahamas over the last two years worth almost $121 million.
According to official property records recovered from Reuters, the purchases included luxury beachfront homes, and seven resort condominiums that cost nearly $72 million by themselves.
It was previously known that FTX and company executives held real estate in the island nation. The Bahamas, after all, was host to Bankman-Fried’s around-$40 million penthouse where he lived and worked (and reportedly did more) alongside nine of his colleagues. While Bankman-Fried enjoyed the company of his nine colleagues, he told Reuters that FTX provided free meals and an “in-house Uber-like” service around the island.
Nevertheless, the property records provide a better look at the sheer scale of the Bahamas purchases—and the inordinate wealth FTX previously had at its disposal while it now owes billions to creditors.
Since the collapse of FTX, upwards of 1 million creditors are down billions of dollars. Bankman-Fried secretly used $10 billion in customer funds to prop up his trading company, Alameda Research, and as Reuters reported last week, at least $1.5 billion of that money is now missing.
Earlier this month, FTX collapsed and filed for bankruptcy protection. The company said in a court filing on Saturday that it owes its 50 largest creditors more than $3 billion.
FTX was the third-largest exchange valued at nearly $32 billion before November 11, when Bankman-Fried announced that the company, alongside other entities including his trading firm Alameda Research, would file for bankruptcy.
Read more at Reuters.