Crypto Hedge Fund Ikigai Loses Access to 'Large Majority' of Assets on FTX: Founder

By Jason Nelson

As the FTX contagion spreads, Ikigai Fund founder Travis Kling announced on Twitter that most of its assets are stuck in the bankrupt Bahamas-based exchange.

"We had a large majority of the hedge fund's total assets on FTX," Kling tweeted. "By the time we went to withdraw Monday [morning], we got very little out. We're now stuck alongside everyone else."

Launched in 2018, Ikigai is an investment firm focused on crypto asset management. Other crypto investment firms include Seven Seven Six, Multicoin Capital, and Grayscale Bitcoin Trust.

"It was entirely my fault and not anyone else's," Kling continued. "I lost my investors' money after they put faith in me to manage risk and I am truly sorry for that. I have publicly endorsed FTX many times and I am truly sorry for that. I was wrong."

Kling says that Ikigai plans to continue trading the assets that the firm has left outside of FTX and decide what to do with its venture fund.

Following a week of turmoil since Binance CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao said the company would liquidate its total holdings of the FTX FTT token, FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on November 11, 2022.

After FTX filed for bankruptcy, several crypto companies and investment funds revealed that they had exposure to FTX, including $95 million from the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund and $30 million from the crypto investment group CoinShares.

"If crypto is to recover and continue on its journey to make the world a better place, I believe the entire concept of trust has to be completely rearchitected," Kling said. "Bitcoin is trustless. Then we built all these trusted things around it, and those things have failed catastrophically."

Despite a glum outlook on the current state of the crypto economy, Kling voiced a glimmer of hope.

"If Ikigai continues on, we pledge to fight harder in this regard. It's a fight worth fighting," he said.

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