Tron founder wants to buy FTX’s crypto assets

Yesterday, Justin Sun, founder of the Tron project, said he is considering buying FTX crypto assets. 

A list of crypto assets still held by FTX also circulated yesterday, including $1.1 billion in SOL (Solana). 

Tron founder takes interest in FTX’s crypto assets

Justin Sun is no stranger to these kinds of ventures. 

Thanks to the crypto project he founded, Tron, it is believed that he owns huge amounts of cryptocurrency, and every now and then he uses some of it to make investments, or to rescue struggling crypto businesses. 

On the other hand, he would stand to lose a lot if the crypto markets collapsed. 

For example, Tron’s own cryptocurrency TRX, which capitalizes about $7 billion, has lost 74% of its market value since its all-time high in early 2018, and 51% since the highs of the last big bull run in 2021. 

Despite this, Sun is still one of the richest crypto holders in the world. 

According to the recent Crypto Wealth Report, there would be only 22 people worldwide holding cryptocurrencies worth at least $1 billion, while there would be as many as 88,000 holding at least $1 million. 

Although the names of those 22 crypto billionaires are not known, it is very likely that Justin Sun is among them. 

FTX’s assets

FTX is the well-known crypto exchange that went bankrupt last year. 

However, when it had to close due to lack of funds, it still had several crypto assets on its books. 

According to data, as of 31 August it still had about $3.4 billion in cryptocurrencies, of which about slightly less than half was in SOL. 

As for Bitcoin, it would only have about $560 million worth, and less than $200 million in ETH. 

Since the bankruptcy trustee is trying to return as many funds to creditors as possible, he is also considering selling the crypto assets and returning fiat currency. 

It is worth noting that compared to the time of the closing, when Bitcoin’s price was about $16,000, the fiat value of those funds has increased. 

Nevertheless, the current $3.4 billion in cryptocurrency still held by FTX would not be enough to repay all the debts, since some of the customer funds had been spent earlier, and another part was taken from the company’s funds after the closure. 

However, it is possible that the curator may decide to wait for better times to sell the crypto assets so as to cash in more than $3.4 billion. 

Justin Sun’s plan

The problem is that if the curator decides to sell FTX’s crypto assets (if authorized by the bankruptcy judge), these large sales could drive down prices, especially of Solana. 

Although there does not seem to be this risk for TRX, Sun has nonetheless proposed a plan to prevent a crypto market collapse in the event of sales by FTX. 

The plan would be to buy large amounts of crypto assets from FTX so that they would not flow onto the exchanges. In fact, if they were put up for sale on the exchanges, the selling pressure would increase significantly, driving prices down. 

To date, it is unclear how far prices could fall in the case of a massive sale by FTX, partly because different ways and especially different timing of sales could have different impacts on prices. 

Taking those assets off the market before they even get there might actually be a way to avoid the worst, and to achieve that it might not even be necessary to buy them all. 

$3.4 billion is not an impossible figure, so Sun’s plan in theory seems plausible. 

However, it is worth noting that, for example, selling $560 million in BTC is unlikely to cause Bitcoin’s price to collapse. 

If the sale were done quickly, in one go, and on exchanges, it would create a temporary collapse at this point in history, but it would hardly affect the long-term trend.