In the past two years, at least 19 properties worth close to $121 million have been purchased in the Bahamas by FTX founder Sam Bankman Fried’s parents, and senior executives of the defunct cryptocurrency exchange, according to official property records.
The majority of FTX’s purchases were high-end beachfront properties, which include seven condominiums in the pricey resort neighborhood of Albany that cost nearly $72 million. According to the deeds, a unit of FTX purchased these properties to serve as “residences for key personnel” within the organization.
Bankman-parents, Fried’s Stanford University law professors Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, are listed as signatories on the papers for another beachfront home in Old Fort Bay, It is a gated neighborhood that once housed a British colonial fort constructed in the 1700s to ward off pirates. One of the documents dated June 15 stated that the property is intended to be used as a “vacation home.”
Mode of payment for the purchase by FTX founder’s parents is unknown
A spokesman for the professors only mentioned that Bankman and Fried had been attempting to return the property to FTX when Reuters asked why the couple made the decision to purchase a vacation home in the Bahamas and how it was paid for—whether in cash, through a mortgage, or by a third party such as FTX.
Although it is well known that Fried’s exchange and its employees purchased properties in the Bahamas, where it formed its headquarters in September of last year, the property records reveal for the first time the scope of their real estate buying binge and the envisioned use of some of the properties.
One of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, FTX, went under, leaving an estimated 1 million creditors with losses running into the billions of dollars. It was claimed that Bankman-Fried used $10 billion in customer deposits—at least $1 billion of which had vanished—in secret to support his trading business.
The fall of FTX has also alerted global regulators and diminished the trust vested by many in cryptocurrencies. However, many are of the opinion that cryptocurrencies will never die even though FTX was one of the largest players in the industry.