Soccer star Tom Brady, companies controlled by the New England Patriots Robert Kraft, and crypto firms Blackrock, Coinbase, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Pantera Ventures, and Tezos Foundation are among the names included in documents filed with the Delaware Bankruptcy Court as the owner of FTX Shares Tendered.
According to the filings, Brady held 1,144,861 shares of common stock, while supermodel, businesswoman and Brady’s ex-wife Gisele Bundchen owned 686,761. The former couple once served as ambassadors for FTX after acquiring shares in the company in June 2021.
Kraft Group held 634,144 common and preferred shares through KPC Venture Capital, and rival cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase held 5,284,899 common and preferred shares.
It’s difficult to estimate a dollar value for the shares since FTX catastrophically collapsed prior to the IPO.
FTX has used its native FTT token for corporate acquisitions, including buying crypto portfolio company Blockfolio in 2020. At the time, the acquisition was valued at $150 million and is said to have been made with a mix of cash, crypto and equity being.
In reality, 94% of the business was funded through AGVs.
On November 6, 2022, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao posted on Twitter that the exchange would liquidate its entire FTT position, effectively hollowing out FTX, which filed for bankruptcy protection less than a week later.
The listing of common and preferred stock represents a more conventional corporate ownership model that will no longer be used.
Before its collapse, FTX had an impressive roster of celebrities and athletes as ambassadors and speakers, including Brady, Bundchen, Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary and Golden State Warriors’ Steph Curry.
While Curry and his SC30 company do not appear in the Delaware filing, O’Leary’s company, O’Leary Productions, held 184,061 FTX common and preferred shares.
At a hearing in the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs in December, the famous businessman called Binance a “massive, unregulated monopoly” and claimed that Binance intentionally caused FTX to collapse.