The chief investment officer and firm founder Travis Kling said that the hedge fund Ikigai Asset Management, based in California, had a "great majority" of its assets on the now-defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
Kling revealed on Monday via Twitter that Ikigai was impacted by the FTX crash last week. The hedge fund's bulk of its assets were traded on the FTX platform, and by the time they attempted a withdrawal on Monday morning, they had received very little money. Due to the FTX crash, they are temporarily trapped alongside everyone else.
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
The Current Roadmap of Ikigai
The company will keep trading its non-FTX-stuck assets, according to Kling's Twitter thread, and will soon decide what to do with its venture fund, which was unaffected by the FTX crisis.
According to him, there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the timetable and chances of a recovery for FTX users. But eventually, he continued and saying:
"We'll be able to decide better if Ikigai is going to continue or just wind-down mode."
Kling asserted that he had been in touch with Ikigai's investors frequently since Monday and that he fully accepted responsibility for any potential financial loss. He claims that he has sincerly apologized to his investors for losing the money that they put their trust in him and added:
“I have publicly endorsed FTX many times and I am truly sorry for that. I was wrong.”
Familiarizing Ikigai
Ikigai was founded in 2018 and, with capital of $30 million from its current investors, created a new venture fund in May. A news statement issued during the financing round stated that Ikigai had more than 275 investors from all across the world. Kling continued by saying:
“It’s obvious now that the space has not done enough to identify and expel bad actors. We’re letting way too many sociopaths get way too powerful and then we all pay the price. If Ikigai continues on, we pledge to fight harder in this regard. It’s a fight worth fighting.”
