Singapore’s state fund, Temasek, said on Thursday that it plans to write down all of its investments in FTX. FTX recently filed for bankruptcy after being accused of mishandling customer funds.
The company said that between October 2021 and January 2022, it put $210 million into FTX International for a 1% stake and $65 million into FTX US for a 1.5% stake. This was done in two funding rounds. As of March 31, 2022, the investment made up about 0.09% of the fund’s total portfolio, which was worth about S$403 billion ($1 = 1.3733 S$).
Related: Bankman-Fried of Special Report-FTX pleaded for help even as he exposed massive accounting flaws.
Other big investors in FTX, like Softbank’s Vision Fund and Sequoia Capital, have also written down their multimillion-dollar investments in the exchange, so Temasek isn’t the first.
The fund said that the writedown was not tied to the outcome of FTX’s bankruptcy proceedings and would not have a “significant effect” on its performance. The fund also said that it didn’t have any direct ties to cryptocurrencies.
Temasek said that it still believed in the potential of blockchain technology and that its investment in FTX was the result of months of due diligence that included looking at FTX’s books and studying regulatory risks to crypto.
“It’s clear from this investment that our faith in Sam Bankman-Fried’s actions, judgment, and leadership may have been misplaced,” Temasek said in a statement. “This was based on our interactions with him and what other people told us,” Temasek said.
FTX, which used to be run by Bankman-Fried, filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection this week. Earlier this month, the company had a serious cash flow problem. Customers rushed to withdraw their funds after hearing that the exchange had transferred funds to Bankman-crypto Fried’s hedge fund, Alameda Research.
The event caused the crypto market as a whole to crash, sending Bitcoin to its lowest point in two years and the total market capitalization well below $1 trillion.
Related: The French central bank urges fast regulation after FTX bankruptcy filings.
Both FTX and Bankman-Fried are now being looked into by regulators and are being sued by customers. Cryptocurrency markets are also worried that the collapse of FTX will spread to other markets.