FTX US Derivatives, formerly LedgerX before it was acquired by FTX US, told customers their assets are safe and the company will “soon be entirely separate” from FTX in a letter shared on Thursday morning by CEO Zach Dexter.
FTX US Derivatives, a U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission licensed derivatives exchange, was acquired by FTX US last year for an undisclosed amount. FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried told Decrypt in December and more recently during an interview on the gm from Decrypt podcast in August that it has been one of his top priorities since the deal was announced.
But now in a letter shared on Twitter, Dexter appears to be trying to distance the company from FTX.
“Our technology infrastructure remains almost entirely separate from the FTX family of companies, and will soon be entirely separate,” he wrote. “Significantly, the ultimate parent company of LedgerX LLC, namely West Realm Shires Inc., is different from the international family of companies headed by FTX Trading Ltd (aka FTX.com).”
There has been a great deal of pressure on FTX US Derivatives to comment as the international arm of FTX very publicly crumbles. After a potential acquisition by Binance was called off, FTT, FTX’s utility token, sunk as low as $2.05. By Thursday morning, Bankman-Fried wrote a long mea culpa on Twitter, saying, “I fucked up.”
West Realm Shires is the company publicly known as FTX US, the U.S.-based arm of Bahamas-based FTX. It’s one of two companies through which Bankman-Fried has made security and equity investments.
The other, Emergent Fidelity Technologies Ltd., is based in the Bahamas. Emergent is the company through which Bankman-Fried took a 7.6% position in Robinhood in April.
West Realm Shires is the company that inked a deal in July giving it the option to acquire BlockFi for $240 million and extended a line of credit worth $680 million.
It is also the company that placed the winning $1.4 billion bid to acquire Voyager Digital’s distressed assets in September. And earlier this year, West Realm Shires announced a partnership with banking app Dave Inc., which made FTX US the exclusive partner for offering cryptocurrencies on the company’s platform.