2024-04-06
The debt-ridden crypto exchange FTX estate recently made a significant move to alleviate its financial troubles. They successfully sold approximately $1.9 billion worth of SOL tokens, clearing a major portion of their debt.
According to sources familiar with the matter, FTX's estate sold off about two-thirds of their SOL holdings, which were valued at around $2.6 billion. This lot consisted of 30 million SOL tokens, each valued at $64. However, these tokens were sold at a discounted price due to their locked-up status, meaning they cannot be immediately sold.
The sale of FTX estate's SOL tokens faced a delay due to a high level of buyer interest, as reported by Bloomberg. Among the interested parties was Galaxy Trading, a subsidiary of Galaxy Digital, which established a $620 million fund specifically to purchase FTX's SOL tokens. This fund comes with a management fee of 1%.
Overall, the FTX estate currently holds a total of 41 million locked-up SOL tokens, valued at approximately $7.5 billion. As of 1 p.m. ET today, Solana, the blockchain platform associated with SOL tokens, was trading at $174.2. This represents a nearly 7% decrease in value over the past 24 hours.
Since the collapse of FTX in November 2022, investors have been eager to acquire a portion of the firm's Solana holdings.
Solana accounted for a significant percentage of FTX's digital asset portfolio, along with Bitcoin, Ether, and the Aptos blockchain native token APT.
In an effort to capitalize on the discounted SOL tokens offered by the FTX estate, various investment firms have made significant moves.
Neptune Digital, for example, announced the purchase of 26,964 SOL tokens at $64 each, amounting to a total investment of $1.73 million. It is important to note that only 20% of this lot will become available for trading in March 2025.
Similarly, Pantera established a $250 million fund in March with the intention of acquiring the discounted Solana tokens from the FTX estate.
Solana experienced a significant price drop to lows of around $10 following the collapse of FTX.
However, the token managed to rebound in early 2024. In fact, Solana reached an all-time high market capitalization of $81 billion in mid-March, largely driven by the popularity of memecoins. CoinGecko Research even declared Solana as the most popular blockchain of the year so far.
As of now, Solana's market capitalization stands at approximately $76.9 billion, making it the fifth largest cryptocurreny.
