Is Crypto Whale Alameda Research in Financial Trouble?

Last summer, Alameda Research’s balance sheet consisted largely of illiquid FTT and SOL tokens, according to new reporting. This development casts doubt on the company’s ability to repay its outstanding debts if necessary.

Run the numbers on Alameda’s balance sheet

Even Alameda Research has been hit by the crypto bear market, according to new reports delving into the company’s finances.

A Wednesday CoinDesk report cites an unnamed source Has claimed that as of June 30, the quantitative trading firm had more than $14.6 billion in assets against $8 billion in liabilities. Alameda was co-founded by crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried in 2017, two years before he launched his hugely successful cryptocurrency exchange, FTX.

Alameda is known as one of crypto’s biggest whales, but if you look closely at the numbers CoinDesk article suggests that the company is in a much more precarious situation than onlookers expected.

Included in the report was the $14.6 billion the company held as of June 30 $3.66 billion in unlocked FTT, $2.16 billion in FTT collateral, $2 billion in equities, $3.37 billion in “crypto held” and $134 million in cash. That amounts to $11.32 billion, of which $3.28 billion has not been accounted for.

Meanwhile, Alameda’s loans total $8 billion, including $292 million in locked FTT and $863 million in locked SOL. interesting, CoinDesk claims that Alameda has valued these two liabilities 50% below the fair market price because the tokens are locked. Treating them at fair market value would increase Alameda’s liabilities by more than $1.1 billion.

This means that Alameda currently has more than $6.11 billion in FTT on its books, of which $5.82 billion counts as assets. FTT is a coin launched by FTX that traders can stake to unlock discounts (from 3% to 60%) on trading fees. FTT is one of the largest coins in the crypto ecosystem, but according to FTXs official websitethere are currently 197,091,309 FTT in circulation, making the market capitalization of the coin at $4.87 billion. That means the current FTT market for Alameda is completely illiquid. It holds $5.82 billion in a token that it cannot sell without lowering its value.

There are also other points of attention regarding the company’s balance sheet. According to the report, Alameda counted Solana-based tokens such as SOL, SRM, FIDA, MAPS, and OXY among its $3.37 billion in crypto assets. Since these were the tokens mentioned by name on the balance sheet, it would be fair to assume that they were Alameda’s largest asset. While the exact amount of each token the company holds is unknown, most of them have had poor performances in the bear market. SRM, FIDA, MAPS and OXY are all down more than 93% from their peaks with markets set to become highly illiquid. If these tokens are representative of Alameda’s combined crypto holdings, the company would struggle to cash in on its $3.37 billion in crypto assets if it ever wanted to.

The Take of Crypto Briefing

There are some caveats to this analysis. First, Crypto Briefing has not been given access to Alameda’s balance sheet – these figures are based on CoinDesk report. Second, even if these numbers were correct at the end of June, Alameda has had four months to make changes to its positions. Finally, Alameda’s financial statements may contain unknown information that paints the company’s position in a much better light.

Nevertheless, it seems that Alameda is in a difficult situation if we fool these numbers. The company has $8 billion in debt, but the numbers show it doesn’t have enough assets to pay them off.

Of course, the situation is probably more complicated. While Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO of Alameda some time ago, the firm has a close relationship with FTX. Given FTX’s history of offering bailouts this year, it’s not hard to imagine the exchange stepping in to help Alameda if needed.

But the company’s apparent financial difficulties shed new light on Bankman-Fried’s cavalier attitude over the summer. Brutal market conditions during May and June wiped out crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, which happened to owe billions of dollars to several major crypto lenders, including Traveler And BlockFi. Bankman-Fried was quick to offer to bail out struggling companies, citing the need to reaffirm investor confidence in the markets. Through his actions, Bankman-Fried earned a reputation as crypto’s lender of last resort; He even did proclaimed in July that he had more than $2 billion ready to deploy to prevent further contagion.

However, this reported balance may tell a different story. If Alameda was stuck in illiquid tokens while the market was tanking, there is a possibility that Bankman-Fried decided to leave not for the sake of the crypto market itself, but simply to save Alameda. In this scenario, stabilizing the market, reducing panic and showing strength could have been a strategy to reassure Alameda’s creditors — and prevent them from asking the company to repay its loans.

Editor‘Note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Alameda Research had $7.4 billion in liabilities. The piece was updated to note that the company was in fact $8 billion in liabilities, according to CoinDeskthe November 2 report.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and several other crypto assets.