A company run by former New York Stock Exchange President Tom Farley is among three suitors vying to buy the remnants of FTX, as the auction for the collapsed cryptocurrency exchange founded by Sam Bankman-Fried reaches its final stages.
Bullish, the crypto exchange run by Farley, fintech startup Figure Technologies and crypto venture-capital firm Proof Group are competing to buy FTX, according to people familiar with the matter. The winner could restart the exchange after its planned exit from bankruptcy next year.
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A banker advising FTX on the process said at a hearing last month that the company received interest from over 70 parties and narrowed it to three, without naming them. A winner could be picked in December.
CoinDesk earlier reported on Proof’s bid; the other two haven’t been previously reported. There are no guarantees a deal will come together, and another suitor could yet emerge.
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As recently as last fall, FTX ranked as one of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges, handling billions of dollars in trading volumes for individual investors outside the U.S. and professional traders. Venture capitalists valued FTX at $32 billion in January 2022, making Bankman-Fried a billionaire several times over.
It collapsed abruptly in November 2022 following a run on FTX customer funds. Prosecutors charged Bankman-Fried with fraud, accusing him of using a back door to plunder billions of dollars of customer funds and spend it on luxury real estate, personal investments and political donations. A New York federal jury last week convicted him on all seven counts he faced. He is expected to be sentenced in March and faces up to 110 years in prison.
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Should a new owner take control of FTX, customers could receive shares in the restarted exchange or new tradable tokens to partially make up for what they are owed, some of the people said. Roughly $9 billion of customer deposits on FTX remain unaccounted for.
FTX’s real-estate portfolio in the Bahamas and other assets aren’t part of the sales process for the exchange.
Some crypto watchers warn that a relaunch of FTX could struggle to get traction with professional traders, who might have long memories about the exchange’s legacy of fraud and embezzlement. Some bidders have discussed dropping the FTX brand from the rebooted exchange.
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Bullish is backed by a roster of prominent investors including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and hedge-fund manager Louis Bacon. Farley, its CEO, was president of the NYSE from 2014 to 2018. In December 2022, it called off a $9 billion deal to go public via a merger with a blank-check company.
Figure, a startup co-founded by former SoFi CEO Mike Cagney, was part of a group that unsuccessfully tried to buy the bankrupt crypto lender Celsius earlier this year. Figure uses blockchain technology for lending and capital markets.
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Proof Group was part of the consortium that won the auction for Celsius. The group agreed to purchase $50 million of equity in the newly reorganized company.
