Tom Brady is probably the most famous American football quarterback of all time, and it is widely known that some time ago he invested millions of dollars in FTX.
A couple of days ago an official document was published that collects all the names of all the shareholders of FTX Trading Ltd. i.e., the company that owned and operated the failed crypto exchange FTX, with all their stakes.
This list contains the names of all the major shareholders of the company.
Shares of FTX owned by Tom Brady
The document shows that Tom Brady owns more than 1.1 million shares in FTX, while his ex-wife Gisele Bündchen almost 700,000. Together, therefore, they purchased nearly 1.8 million shares in FTX Trading Ltd.
It is not known exactly how much they spent to buy them, but it is plausible that it was several million dollars, if not tens of millions.
The current value of those shares is virtually zero, since the company is effectively bankrupt, and the shareholders are the last creditors who will eventually be repaid. In contrast, as of July 2021, the total value of the company was valued at $18 billion.
Only in the remote case that the bankruptcy trustee would be able to restructure the company and restart it, could those shares return to market value, but as of today that seems a very implausible scenario.
However, Brady and Bündchen are not the major shareholders.
For example, it appears that Ontario Limited owns more than 2.2 million shares, Open Finance Foundation more than 3.2 million, and Singapore’s Artz Fund Investments more than 7 million, overall.
Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison herself owns 2.7 million, and Nishad Singh 44 million.
The single largest shareholder reported in the document is unnamed, and has 469 million shares, while Sam Bankman-Fried turns out to be the largest shareholder in West Realm Shires Inc.
The list of FTX Trading shareholders also includes Coinbase with 0.9 million shares.
Therefore, Tom Brady is not among the company’s largest shareholders, but he is still among the second-tier shareholders.
Tom Brady’s investment in FTX
Brady and Bündchen bought FTX shares in June 2021, in the midst of the bull run, when they were still married.
Brady not only publicly revealed the investment but also commented by saying that that was an incredibly exciting time for the crypto sector and that Sam Bankman-Fried had opened his eyes to the endless possibilities of this world.
He also added that this investment showed the importance of educating people about the power of cryptocurrencies.
The famous sportsman described himself at the time as a big supporter of cryptocurrencies, so much so that his investment was part of a real long-term partnership with FTX.
In fact, he began to openly promote and publicize it from then on, so much so that he later got into trouble with the authorities once the exchange’s mismanagement was discovered.
A few months before investing in FTX he had also launched his own collection of NFTs.
In addition to Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen, FTX also had other famous promoters, including Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank and Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors. Curry, however, does not appear to own shares in the company, while O’Leary Productions owns more than 180,000 shares.
The comparison with Brady and Bündchen’s 1.8 million shares gives a good idea of how much the two had invested in the company.
The court proceedings
In the meantime, the court proceedings against Sam Bankman-Fried, and the restructuring and liquidation proceedings handled by bankruptcy trustee Jay Ray III, are moving forward.
Indeed, today a hearing is scheduled in the bankruptcy court for the District of Delaware, which will even be live-streamed on YouTube.
However, a distinction must be made between the court proceedings related to the management of the bankruptcy and the criminal proceedings against Sam Bankman-Fried and the other defendants. The former aims to handle the restructuring or liquidation of the company, while the latter aims to determine any criminal liability of the directors.
The two proceedings are separate, so much so that the trial against Sam Bankman-Fried will not begin until October.
It is because of these hearings that documents such as the one containing the names of shareholders are released, and it is therefore possible that more similar information will come out in the coming weeks or months.
Source: https://en.cryptonomist.ch/2023/01/11/tom-brady-more-million-ftx-shares/