FTX estate sells $1.9 billion worth of locked up SOL for $64 per token: report

Quick Take

  • The FTX estate sold up to 30 million SOL for $64 each, totaling around $1.9 billion for the lot.
  • Galaxy Trading created a $620 million fund to buy up FTX’s discounted SOL, Bloomberg reports.

The FTX estate sold around $1.9 billion worth of SOL in a bid to clear the collapsed crypto exchange of debt.

FTX's estate sold off roughly two-thirds of SOL lot worth around $2.6 billion, reports Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter. The lot contained up to 30 million SOL valued at $64 each. The tokens were discounted because they're locked up, meaning it will take a while before they're sellable.

A delay of an FTX estate SOL sale occurred due to "significant buyer interest," Bloomberg adds. One interested entity was Galaxy Trading, a subsidiary of Galaxy Digital, which set up a $620 million fund to buy up FTX's SOL. This fund has a management fee of 1%.

The FTX estate holds a total of 41 million locked-up SOL that are worth around $7.5 billion. Solana traded for $174.2 at 1 p.m. ET today after seeing a nearly 7% 24-hour decrease, according to The Block's price page for Solana.

FTX's SOL

Since the collapse of FTX in November 2022, investors have scrambled to get a cut of the firm's Solana holdings. Solana made up the largest percentage of FTX's digital asset holdings, with bitcoin, ether and the Aptos blockchain native token APT following behind.

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The digital asset firm Neptune Digital previously stated that it bought 26,964 SOL at $64 each for $1.73 million, with 20% of that lot unlocking in March 2025. Pantera also established a $250 million fund in March to purchase the discounted Solana of the FTX estate, The Block previously reported.

Solana experienced a price dip to lows of around $10 following the collapse of FTX. However, the token rebounded in early 2024. Solana reached an all-time high market capitalization of $81 billion in mid-March largely due to memecoins. CoinGecko Research went as far as to call Solana the most popular blockchain of this year so far.

Solana's market capitalization now sits at $76.9 billion, making it the fifth largest cryptocurrency by that metric, according to The Block prices.


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© 2023 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

About Author

MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.

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