FTX, a bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange, missed out on the opportunity to own SUI tokens worth billions of dollars after selling its warrant rights to the coin too early. After the launch of SUI’s mainnet, the token price reached over $3 before dropping significantly, but had FTX held onto its SUI tokens, they would have been worth around $1 billion.
FTX Loses out on Gains on SUI After Selling its Token Warrants
FTX’s management lost the opportunity of a $1 billion payday by selling 890 million SUI token warrants, which would have given them the right to own assets release in the future. FTX was part of Mysten Labs’ Series B funding round, alongside other well-known participants including Binance, Coinbase, and Circle. FTX Ventures, the venture capital arm of FTX, purchased equity stakes in Mysten Labs worth $101 million and warrant rights to over 800 million SUI tokens worth $1 million. However, FTX announced its intentions to sell back its stake in Mysten Labs, as well as its SUI token warrant rights, in March 2023.
The transaction was completed in April for $96 million as part of FTX’s bankruptcy proceedings. The Sui mainnet went live on May 3, 2023, with the SUI token trading at a peak of over $3.5 a few minutes after launch, according to CoinGecko. While the token price has subsequently fallen to trade at $1.33 at the time of writing, FTX had 890 million SUI tokens which would have been worth over $1 billion, thereby increasing the money made.
Sui Blockchain’s Throughput Rate Peaks at Nearly 300,000 TPS
SUI is a layer-1 blockchain that utilizes the proof-of-stake mechanism, boasting increased speed and scalability. According to a performance update in April 2023, the SUI network’s throughput rate peaked at 297,000 transactions per second (TPS) with a hundred validators while also recording an average time to finality of less than half a second. The SUI token currently has a market cap of over $700 million, positioning it amongst the top 100 tokens, and a circulating supply of over 528 million out of a maximum total supply of 10 billion, worth an FDV of $13.3 billion.
