FTX made significant investments into Web3, gaming, and esports, however, it is yet to be seen what will happen to these investments after the potential acquisition goes through.
There is even more uncertainty around investments that involved both FTX and FTX US which operates separately from the main business.
During the bull market of 2021 and early 2022, FTX US made a huge move by launching its own NFT marketplace to compete with rival OpenSea, complete with exclusive NFT collaborations with the Coachella music festival and NBA superstar Steph Curry.
FTX US also launched a gaming division, which was established in February 2022 according to Bloomberg. This gaming division aims to create infrastructure to allow developers to integrate NFTs and cryptocurrencies into their games.
Through this gaming division, FTX US also acquired game studio Good Luck Games in March, just prior to the launch of their fantasy-themed card battler Storybook Brawl.
However, being that FTX US is “not currently impacted” by the deal, it is unclear what will happen to these businesses or if FTX US plans to rebrand itself after the acquisition.
Still, FTX itself made plenty of substantial investments that will no doubt be affected by the deal with Binance.
Back in June 2021, FTX began investing heavily in esports. In a joint venture with FTX US, FTX signed a mind-blowing 10-year $210 million naming rights deal with esports team TSM, the most valuable esports team in the US, but their esports investments didn’t stop there.
FTX also signed a 7-year sponsorship deal with Riot Games that sees the crypto exchange sponsoring their North American League of Legends Championship Series, not to mention some smaller deals with Brazilian esports team FURIA and tournament organizer Nerd Street Gamers.
FTX also invested in a variety of NFT and Web3 game developers including Yuga Labs of Ape Yacht Club fame, the team behind the NFT project Doodles, and NFT game developer Faraway, through its $2 billion dollar investment fund FTX Ventures.
Considering that FTX Ventures was established under FTX’s parent company, all of their investment will no doubt be affected by the Binance deal.
Still, there is speculation as to whether the deal with Binance will go through at all considering that the deal happened so quickly, is yet to be finalized, and Binance has only signed a non-binding letter of intent with FTX.
All of this leaves a lot of questions unanswered and the potential fate of all of FTX’s investments are completely up in the air. For now, we’ll simply have to wait to see how Binance handles the deal to find out more about what will happen to all of FTX’s investments.
