FTX estate's $7.5 billion sale of locked solana attracts strong interest

The FTX estate’s sale of 41 million locked solana ( SOL -1.11% ) worth $7.5 billion has seen heavy demand, according to nine sources close to the discussions.

Galaxy Asset Management was picked by the FTX estate in September 2023 to facilitate token sales as the estate reckoned that it would provide the services in a cost-effective and discrete manner. The registered investment advisor is allocating the tokens to prospective bidders, some of whom are raising funds to make larger bids.

Neptune Digital was the first firm to publicly state it has made an acquisition of locked solana from the FTX estate. It said it bought 26,964 SOL at $64 per token. Out of the tokens, 20% will be unlocked in March 2025 and the rest will unlock monthly until 2028.

Galaxy Trading makes a bid

Galaxy Trading is one of the funds raising money from investors to bid for a portion of the locked solana from the estate. Investors are able to participate at $64 per token, according to three sources. This fund will have a management fee of 1%, according to documents seen by The Block.

BitGo will be the custodian of the tokens, the documents stated. While the fund will distribute staking rewards in line with purchases, the rewards are currently slated to be locked in tandem with the underlying tokens.

Two sources said that after their allocations were agreed with Galaxy Trading, they were cut down by 13% when the deals closed. This was due to the FTX estate having a final say on distributions, according to one source familiar with the situation.

While some of the deals have now closed, two sources say, there is still a portion of the tokens remaining. They are anticipating that these will become available late next month, although this has not been confirmed.

One source said the demand was heavy because investors realized they were underexposed to the token as its price rose rapidly during the process.

Other funds are interested

As of earlier this month, Pantera was raising money from investors to create a fund to purchase up to $250 million worth of locked solana from the estate, according to Bloomberg. Pantera reportedly plans to take a 0.75% management fee and a 10% performance fee.

Investment fund Phoenix Digital was aiming to raise funds for a similar strategy, according to Bloomberg. The company was looking for minimum investments of $100,000, according to pitch documents seen by The Block. However, two sources say that the bid didn’t go through.

FalconX was also raising funds to make a large bid to the estate, according to three sources.

Galaxy Asset Management is also selling 42 other tokens, primarily based on Solana and Ethereum, with a total value of around $211 million, according to one source. This includes $29.4 million of gatetoken, $23 million of atlas, $23 million of shadow token and $20 million of Bitfinex’s token, unus sed leo.

We reached out to Galaxy, Pantera, Phoenix, FalconX and BitGo for this article and will update should we hear back.