One of Anthony Scaramucci’s Skybridge Capital funds has suspended redemptions because private company stock has become more illiquid. Sources told Bloomberg that the Legion Strategies fund now has around 20% of its portfolio in private stocks including crypto exchange FTX, and another 10% in cryptocurrencies.
Skybridge acts as a fund of funds, and has several cryptocurrency funds including for Bitcoin and Ethereum which are part of the Legion Strategies crypto exposures.
The Skybridge website lists a dozen private stock investments, but its unclear whether all of these are included in the Legion Strategies fund. Of the twelve private companies, ten are crypto related. The exceptions are Plaid, and Klarna which recently did a funding at a valuation of $6.5 billion compared to a previous round at $45.6 billion.
Apart from investments in FTX and FTX.US, bitcoin mining firm Genesis Digital Assets is part of the portfolio as is Bitcoin asset manager NYDIG and the Kraken exchange.
Regulators have pointed to the minimal mainstream fallout from the crypto crash, but this could be a limited one.
It also remains to be seem what happens with respect to Equities First, the asset backed lender which previously was mainly involved in equities but now has considerable crypto exposure. While the company says it has returned $343 million to bankrupt crypto lender Celsius, it still owes Celsius $439 million. Celsius originally borrowed money from Equities First which was unable to return the crypto collateral in mid 2021. Additionally, Equities First is owed $162 million from bankrupt hedge fund Three Arrows Capital with just $91 million in collateral.
Meanwhile, FTX partnered with Skybridge’s SALT event to launch the Crypto Bahamas conference in April 2022.
The amount invested in the Legion Strategies fund was $228 million and there are just 22 accredited investors. The last updated asset valuation figure was $421 million in April 2021.
