FTX Ventures buys 30% of Anthony Scaramucci's SkyBridge Capital for an undisclosed amount; SkyBridge will use some of the funds to buy $40M in cryptocurrencies
Jamie Crawley / CoinDesk :
Context & Ripple Effects
FTX Ventures had only recently launched a $2 billion fund aimed at investments across crypto startup stages; the SkyBridge stake extends that deployment into an established asset manager rather than another startup round. SkyBridge entered the deal after assets had fallen from $9.2 billion in 2015 to $1.8 billion in 2022, while its crypto investments had lost money.
The transaction later gained a different significance when FTX sought to recover investments from Scaramucci and others, characterizing them as part of an influence-buying campaign. That subsequent recovery lawsuit puts the minority stake and SkyBridge's planned crypto purchase in the broader record of FTX's 2022 capital deployment.
First-order effects
- FTX Ventures becomes a 30% owner of SkyBridge, giving the fund a direct stake in the asset manager alongside its newly launched crypto venture fund.
- SkyBridge receives fresh capital and commits some of it to a $40 million cryptocurrency purchase, increasing its exposure to the market it had been pursuing since 2018.
Second-order effects
- SkyBridge's clients and counterparties face a manager whose ownership and balance-sheet exposure are more closely tied to FTX and crypto assets than before.
- For FTX Ventures, the deal broadens a portfolio that had participated in 47 venture rounds into an ownership position in a fund manager, linking its investment activity to a potential distribution and credibility channel outside startup financing.
Third-order effects
- The later effort to recoup FTX investments shows how minority stakes can become contested assets when a strategic investor's capital base unravels, placing greater weight on the durability of such partnership financing.
- If exchange-affiliated investment arms keep taking stakes in asset managers, crypto-market exposure and ownership influence become more concentrated within the same capital networks rather than separated between platforms and allocators.
The trend: Crypto firms' venture arms are expanding from startup checks into strategic stakes in asset managers, blending capital allocation, market exposure, and distribution relationships.