​Funds, drones, and strawberries. What Alameda Research invested billions of dollars in

It begins to emerge a clearer picture of where the money of the bankrupt FTX exchange’s users and directly related to the company Alameda Research, which was headed by Caroline Ellison, might have gone.

On Tuesday, December 6, the Financial Times published Alameda’s entire investment portfolio, totaling about $5,4 billion. The document dates back to early November. The former FTX CEO sent it out to potential investors in the days before bankruptcy, trying to raise loans to save his crypto empire from collapse.

Larry Cermak, The Block VP of Research, converted the screenshots published by FT into electronic form and posted them as a spreadsheet to the public, allowing third-party observers to work with the document. Thus, 32,65% of the funds were spent on acquiring stakes in companies, 12% on the take-over of business, and more than 7% on the purchase of project tokens.

In this, Alameda invested almost 22% of the funds, that is, more than $1,1 billion, in the mining company Genesis Digital Assets. Despite the similar name, it is in no way related to Genesis Trading, part of the Digital Currency Group (DCG) and which is on the verge of bankruptcy.

Earlier in an interview with FT, Bankman-Fried acknowledged that he had been involved in Alameda’s venture capital activities, but he still dodges questions about the misuse of FTX customer funds in inquiries from reporters.

Judging by the spreadsheet, the lines between Bankman-Fried’s companies were blurred. The Genesis miner and Anthropic, an artificial intelligence research project, were listed in a previously leaked document containing FTX’s balance sheet data. The portfolio also includes stakes in Anthony Scaramucci’s Sequoia Capital and SkyBridge Capital funds, as well as in Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Boring Company projects through investments in K5.

Of Alameda’s remaining investments, most are in cryptocurrencies and DeFi projects. But the list also includes numerous start-up video game development studios and betting platforms, online banks, publishers, an infertility clinic, and Brinc, a military drone manufacturer. Among other things, Alameda invested $25 million in 80 Acres, which specializes in growing lettuce and strawberries in Ohio.

Alameda invested in media, most of all in Chinese media. The company spent $5 million to acquire a 25% stake in local cryptocurrency news site ODaily, the same stake in the online publication BlockBeats was worth $3,56 million.

Journalists have been unable to identify some of the records or links of the listed names to any active business, noting that the amount of unidentified investment by Alameda reaches another $100 million.

When asked why FTX used customer funds to support Alameda, Bankman-Fried repeatedly stated his ignorance. The ex-CEO of FTX says that to avoid conflicts of interest, he decided not to participate in Alameda’s trading and risk management, so he was not fully aware of its dire state until November.

However, data both numerous overlaps in documentation and analysis of blockchain transactions by Nansen or Glassnode show that the two companies have long mixed funds to the point where it would be hard not to notice.

Ellison, unlike Bankman-Fried ignores inquiries from reporters. According to the latest reports, she was seen in New York City on December 4. Bankman-Fried willingly participates in interviews, but consistently avoids direct questions. Binance exchange CEO calls him “one of the greatest fraudsters in history,” while the CEO of Galaxy Digital investment company Mike Novogratz considers his comments in the media “delusional” and is surprised that lawyers let him speak.