Our Investment in FTX
We are excited to announce that Race Capital has invested in FTX, a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange built by traders for traders, in its $8 million seed round along with Consensus Lab, FBG and Galois Capital.
FTX is a cryptocurrency derivatives exchange that offers futures, leveraged tokens and over-the-counter (OTC) trading. We are very excited to partner up with Sam Bankman-Fried and his highly experienced team of traders from traditional financial institutions like Jane Street, Susquehanna, and Optiver.
The three main things that got us really excited about FTX was the team, traction, and overall market opportunity.
Sam Bankman-Fried and his Team
Sam has assembled a fantastic team of experienced Wall Street traders and Silicon Valley alumni. Sam was previously a trader on Jane Street Capital’s international ETF desk, where he traded a variety of ETFs, futures, currencies, and equities and helped design the firm’s automated OTC trading system.
FTX’s founding members, including CTO Gary Wang, COO Andy Croghan, and others, bring decades of combined experience from leading organizations such as Jane Street, Optiver, Susquehanna International Group, Google, and Facebook. They have experience trading up to $1 billion per day and manages over $100 million in digital assets via Alameda Research.
FTX’s motto is they are an exchange built by traders for traders, and it really shows by the quality of the team and how well the product has resonated with the community.
Traction — $300 million in total trading volume in 60 days
Within 60 days of their soft launch, FTX recently crossed $300 million in total trading volume, released new products on a continuous basis, and has been very proactive in building and serving their community of traders.
It’s very rare to see this level of dedication, passion, traction, shipping new products, and community building all at the same time. Watching the team launch the FTX reminds me a lot of the early days of Binance, where I was one of the early users of their exchange.
Below is just a small sample of what the FTX has achieved in less than 90 days:
Market — Asia is the center of Crypto Trading
While much of the emphasis is placed on the spot markets (Binance & Coinbase) the futures market is as equally large as the spot market and the action is happening in Asia.
Looking at these markets from a trading volume perspective, on July 28th, 2019 the total spot market volume was $6.8B per day and the total derivatives market volume was $9.9B per day. (Source: Alameda Research volume monitor)
Moreover the top derivatives venues regularly drive 3x more trading volume vs. their spot market equivalents:
We are incredibly grateful for the chance to back Sam, Gary, Andy, Darren, Constance, and the whole FTX team on their journey to become the #1 derivatives exchange in the world.
PS — If you’re interested in building the future of trading, FTX is hiring.
