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Key Takeaways

• Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX co-founder Gary Wang purchased a 7.6% stake in Robinhood final May
• Purchased for shut to half a billion, the funds have been raised by way of a mortgage from sister buying and selling agency Alameda Research
• In November, FTX was revealed to be bancrupt, after it despatched buyer property to Alameda to shore up buying and selling losses, finally main to an $8 billion gap on the steadiness sheet
• Robinhood administrators have accredited a plan to buy back the 7.6% stake 

The king of the crypto villains could also be underneath home arrest at his mother and father’ $4 million house in California, however the remainder of the world continues to clear up the mess attributable to FTX. 

Sam Bankman-Fried’s previously tier-1 trade, FTX, collapsed in November. One of the fascinating tidbits to come out of this, apart from workers’ obvious love of the drug Adderall, was the presence of Robinhood shares on the steadiness sheet. 

FTX had bought 56 million shares of Robinhood in May 2022, the identical month that LUNA collapsed, which we now know triggered giant losses at FTX’s sister agency Alameda Research and led to Bankman-Fried sending buyer property to cowl the losses and meet margin calls. The shares comprised a 7.6% stake in Robinhood. 

Bankman-Fried purchased Robinhood stake with borrowed funds

In an affidavit to a Caribbean courtroom prior to his arrest, Bankman-Fried revealed he and FTX co-founder Gary Wang borrowed over $546 million from Alameda final April. This cash was used to capitalise Fidelity Technologies Ltd, which is a shell company by which the Robinhood stake was purchased. 

The shares had been pledged as collateral towards a mortgage taken out by Alameda. Which if it sounds odd, it ought to, as a result of as mentioned above, Alameda is the exact same agency whose funds have been used to buy the shares within the first place.

Like all the things within the FTX/Alameda universe, it was a round financial system backed by nothing. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and all that.  

Robinhood to rebuy shares

A submitting Wednesday by Robinhood’s board of administrators accredited a plan to repurchase the stake, value $586 million at present market costs. 

“The proposed share purchase underscores the confidence the Board of Directors and management team have in our business,” mentioned Robinhood’s chief monetary officer Jason Warnick.

Robinhood went public in July 2021, and in plenty of methods grew to become the poster baby of the pandemic market hysteria. Its app spiked to the highest of downloads, with retail merchants taking to the markets with their stimulus cheques. 

The agency grew meteorically, finally going public in July 2021, within the warmth of the bull market. Its share worth since has completed what virtually all the things throughout the tech and crypto area has – plummeted. 

Ultimately, this shouldn’t change a lot for HOOD traders. As for the crypto area, the additional it strikes away from the disgraced Sam Bankman-Fried the higher.