FTX Blowup Puts Trove of Prized Bored Apes at Risk of Liquidation

As Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto empire teeters on a solvency crisis, one potential source of money is a trove of prized non-fungible tokens (NFTs) worth millions of dollars owned by Alameda Research.

The 92-NFT collection features 31 rare ones from the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection and 26 Otherdeed for Otherside tokens, both created by NFT powerhouse Yuga Labs.

FTX Ventures, the $2 billion VC wing of the crypto empire, was a prominent investor in Yuga Labs’ $450 million funding round last March.

A representative of the firm says that FTX's financial sibling Alameda Research is in charge of the wallet, and has previously traded Bored Apes as part of its NFT trading strategy.

The collection has an estimated value of between 4,000 and 5,000 ETH (or roughly $4.7 million to $5.8 million), according to Ivan Yakovenko, the founder of NFT valuation site DeepNFTValue. That’s likely far from enough to prop up FTX, though, given how big it is and how badly wounded it seems to be.

The situation is reminiscent of the Three Arrows Capital blowup that put the crypto hedge fund’s multi-million dollar “Starry Night” NFT collection in jeopardy of liquidation earlier this year. No NFTs from that fund have so far been auctioned, though the entire collection was moved to a safehouse wallet in October.

Among the Alameda wallet’s rarest collectibles are three Bored Apes with gold fur, a trait with a floor price of 1,000 ETH. The last gold fur Bored Ape sold for 800 ETH, though in the event of liquidation, Yakovenko estimates each of the gold fur NFTs would fetch around 500 ETH given current market conditions.

The collection also has four “trippy fur” Bored Apes, a trait that currently sports a 599 ETH floor, according to OpenSea.

The wallet’s most recent Bored Ape activity was three months ago, according to Etherscan.