Sequoia Capital wrote down the entire value of its holdings in FTX, a sign that the venture capital firm believes there is no clear path to recoup its investment in the troubled cryptocurrency exchange.
Sequoia told its investors on Wednesday that the venture capital firm invested about $214 million in FTX’s international and US operations last year. A company spokesman said the write-down included stakes in FTX.com and FTX.us.
Sequoia is one of the big backers, and its Sam Bankman-Fried FTX holdings will suffer huge losses. Others include BlackRock, Tiger Global Management and SoftBank Group.
A smaller venture fund, Multicoin Capital, told investors Wednesday that about 10% of its assets under management were affected.
Clients suddenly lost confidence in FTX.com, exposing serious problems with cryptocurrency trading. People scrambled to withdraw funds and sell tokens tied to the company, causing a liquidity crunch. Rival Binance agreed to acquire FTX.com, then pulled out over concerns about FTX’s financial health.
Bankman-Fried held a conference call with investors on Wednesday and said FTX.com needs to inject cash or it will have to file for bankruptcy, according to Bloomberg. US entity FTX.us is far from a crisis, but the writedown by Sequoia also shows a lack of confidence in the asset.
Sequoia tried to reassure investors, saying that FTX accounted for less than 3% of committed capital among funds with the most exposure to FTX. Sequoia said the fund had realised and unrealised gains of about $7.5 billion.