Crypto asset management firm Ikigai ‘caught up in the FTX collapse’

Crypto asset management firm Ikigai Asset Management is among the companies to get caught up in the FTX collapse as it had a large portion of its assets on the collapsed exchange, according to the firm’s founder and chief investment officer, Travis Kling.

Unfortunately, I have some pretty bad news to share. Last week Ikigai was caught up in the FTX collapse. We had a large majority of the hedge fund’s total assets on FTX. By the time we went to withdraw Monday mrng, we got very little out. We’re now stuck alongside everyone else.

— Travis Kling (@Travis_Kling) November 14, 2022

Kling, however, asserted that he had been constantly in contact with the firm’s investors since Monday, and he accepted full responsibility for any loss of funds.

It was entirely my fault and not anyone else’s. I lost my investors’ money after they put faith in me to manage risk and I am truly sorry for that. I have publicly endorsed FTX many times and I am truly sorry for that. I was wrong.

— Travis Kling (@Travis_Kling) November 14, 2022

While there is uncertainty about the “timeline and potential recovery for FTX customers,” Kling said the firm would continue to trade assets that are not trapped on FTX. 

Over the coming weeks and months, the timeline and potential recovery for FTX customers will become clearer. Right now, it’s really hard to say. At some point, we’ll be able to make a better call on whether Ikigai is going to keep going or just move into winddown mode.

— Travis Kling (@Travis_Kling) November 14, 2022

Additionally, the founder of Ikigai indicated that the firm is yet to decide what to do with its venture fund, which was not affected by FTX.

Call for a  complete re-architecture

Travis Kling doesn’t expect a quick recovery from the current crisis. 

I’m at a loss for words at the depth & breadth of the pieces of shit that permeate crypto. So many fucking sociopaths were granted the opportunity to do so much damage. It’s hard for me to imagine the space bouncing back quickly from this ordeal. Too many got burned too hard.

— Travis Kling (@Travis_Kling) November 14, 2022

For crypto to recover and continue on its “journey to make the world a better place,” Kling believes the entire concept of trust has to be completely rearchitected. 

“Bitcoin is trustless. Then we built all these trusted things around it, and those things have failed catastrophically,” Kling said.

A Twitter user going by David Lin replied to Kling by claiming that CEXs circumvents Bitcoin’s solution, sharing the same sentiment with other users about centralized entities. 

I guess everyone is going to point you out in the Bitcoin trust issue. Bitcoin was designed to address this exact problem. Just that CEX are exactly the way to circumvent the the solution Bitcoin provides.

— David Lin (@rayhan_inv) November 14, 2022

Founded in 2018, Ikigai raised $30 million from its existing investors last May to start a new venture fund, the Ikigai Trust Revolution Opportunities Fund, to invest in early-stage Web3 initiatives. 

A press release describes the launch of the Ikigai Trust Revolution Opportunities Fund as a departure from Ikigai’s historical approach to investing, which over the last few years focused primarily on systematic, model-driven exposure to bitcoin.