This 3-yr-old crypto firm recorded 1,000% surge in revenue to $1.02 bn in 2021

/ 2 min read

Founded by MIT graduates Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang just three years back, the crypto derivatives firm saw its net income rising from $17 mn to $388 mn on a year-on-year basis

The net worth of 30-year-old Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of FTX, is valued at $11.5 billion.
The net worth of 30-year-old Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of FTX, is valued at $11.5 billion.

Riding the crypto boom during Covid-19, the three-year-old Bahamas-based crypto derivatives exchange FTX Trading Ltd. recorded a 1,000% rise in its revenue from $89 million to $1.02 billion in 2021, mainly driven by its innovative trading business and flurry of acquisitions done globally. The company's profit for the period also rose from just $17 million to $388 million.

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In the first quarter of 2022, the U.S.-based Sam Bankman-Fried-led FTX recorded a revenue of $270 million and the crypto firm is also eying over $1 billion revenue in full fiscal year, leaked financials of the privately held company, accessed by a global business media platform, shows.

About 60% of FTX's revenue came from futures trading fees, and 16% from spot trading. Despite a blockbuster performance during 2021 and Q1 of 2022, it's unclear how the company performed during the second quarter of 2022, a period when crypto prices came down crashing to new lows.

Launched in May 2019, FTX is backed by Alameda Research, a $100 million AUM quantitative crypto trading that was founded by Sam Bankman-Fried. The firm accounts for 6% of FTX's exchange volumes., trading over $600 million and $1 billion per day.

FTX offers products including industry-first derivatives, options, volatility products and leveraged tokens. The company was co-founded by MIT graduates Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang. While Sam was a trader on Jane Street Capital’s international ETF desk before founding FTX, Gary was a software engineer at Google prior to founding FTX.

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The company has of late resorted to a lending spree, eying companies facing a liquidity crunch and acquiring distressed assets to build a fleet of global subsidiaries. Its recent acquisitions include Robinhood (7.6% stake), BlockFi, Digital Assets DA AG, Switzerland, and IFS Group and Hive, Australia. It has also bought around 15 smaller companies across Germany, Turkey, and UAE, among other countries.

The 30-year-old multibillionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, during an exclusive interview with Fortune global magazine, had recently said the crypto winter, a period of major downturns in the global crypto market, has already shown the worst part of it, and that it'll pass soon. His net worth is valued at $11.5 billion, as per Fortune data.

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Meanwhile, the global crypto prices are in the negative territory today, with most cryptocurrencies trading in the red in the past 24 hours. The world's biggest cryptocurrency Bitcoin is down 0.51% to $21,273.80, while the Ethereum blockchain is down 2.99% to $1,571.94. USDT is 0.03%; Solana 3.34%; Dogecoin 3.74%; and Shiba Inu down by 0.76%.

This year, the carnage on the Wall Street impacted global cryptocurrencies the most, with a number of them seeing a price erosion between 85% to 100% from their all-time highs. Topping the chart is Internet Computer, whose price has eroded 99% after falling from $750 to $6. There are 34 currencies that saw values erode by more than 90%, while 26 currencies lost between 85% to 90%.

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