Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto venture firm FTX Ventures is once again making moves in the market, this time reportedly buying a 30% stake in crypto firm SkyBridge Capital, according to CNBC.
SkyBridge Capital will reportedly be using $40 million of the fresh funding to invest and hold cryptocurrencies on the firm’s balance sheet.
Based in New York City, SkyBridge Capital is an investment firm led by Anthony Scaramucci, Troy Gaveski, Brett S. Messing, and Raymond Nolte. FTX Ventures is a venture fund launched in January 2022 and led by Amy Wu, previously a General Partner at LightSpeed Venture Partners.
Neither SkyBridge nor FTX Ventures have responded to Decrypt’s request for comment at press time.
The latest move comes after SkyBridge paused investor redemptions in July for one of its funds with exposure to Bitcoin and Ethereum. Called Legion Strategies, the fund managed roughly $230 million in assets, with nearly a quarter of those funds held in crypto as of February.
“The suspension is driven largely by a liquidity mismatch resulting from late-stage private investments in the fund. SkyBridge funds do not have leverage. There is zero risk of any asset liquidation,” a Skybridge representative told Decrypt at the time.
The halt meant that Scaramucci’s firm joined a long list of other crypto firms and projects taking similar decisions amid the wider crypto rout.
And while some firms have struggled in such adverse conditions, Sam Bankman-Fried has emerged as somewhat of a savior, shelling out millions to troubled companies.
FTX founder emerges as ‘crypto savior’
As crypto prices slumped, Sam Bankman-Fried began shelling out lifelines to various crypto firms. In total, he handed out roughly $750 million in various investments to companies like BlockFi and Voyager Digital.
It’s still unclear, however, if the recent investment in SkyBridge Capital were for the same reasons.
As for the title of crypto “savior,” Bankman-Fried said he was disappointed that no one else joined him in propping up the industry.
“I would be super happy for others to take that on instead of me. The reason that I have been doing it, frankly, is because it doesn’t seem clear to me that there are others who are stepping up and doing that,” he said on a recent episode of Decrypt’s gm podcast.
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