, Author: Gong Quanyu, reproduced by Odaily with authorization.

SBF (Sam Bankman-Fried) has become one of the well-known market traders in the encryption market. Under his leadership, the FTX exchange and related currencies such as FTT, SOL, and SRM have performed quite aggressively in the encryption market. His layout strategy And trading methods have also become one of the focus of the market.

As a result, Chain Catcher will launch a series of articles to conduct in-depth investigations on SBF, its FTX, and Alameda Research, trying to uncover the secrets behind the rapid rise of the SBF system. This article focuses on the "circle of friends" of SBF, and makes an inventory of investment institutions and exchanges that have a deep cooperative relationship with the SBF department.

Recently, another SBF-based currency will be launched on the exchange, which is the well-known map application Maps.me token MAPS. This project has also become the project with the highest financing amount in the recent encryption market with a seed round of financing of 50 million US dollars.

• However, according to media reports, Maps.me was sold to Parity.com by Russian Internet giant Mail.ru in November 2020 for $20 million. Now two months later, Maps.me has raised $50 million in financing after coming up with the DeFi story. Its valuation has grown astonishingly fast, which also reflects SBF’s high hopes for this project.

• However, the equally interesting information is that Genesis Block Venture (reported as Genesis Capital, but the official name is this), CMS Holdings and Sino Global Capital, which participated in the project, have appeared in Alameda Research's investment reports many times in the past, especially It is in the investment report of the SBF series currency.

• After further combing, we can also find more frequent names such as Three Arrows Capital, Multicoin Capital, NGC Capital, etc., all of which have jointly invested in at least 4 projects with Alameda Research, such as the following investments:

• At the end of June 2020, Serum, a decentralized exchange led by SBF, announced the completion of a private placement round of financing, with participation from Genesis Block, CMS Holdings and Sino Global Capital.

• In August 2020, Perpetual Protocol, a decentralized derivatives trading agreement, completed a financing of US$1.8 million. Multicoin Capital led the investment, and Three Arrows Capital, CMS Holding, and Alameda Research participated in the investment.

• In September 2020, the synthetic asset protocol Linear Finance received US$1.8 million in private equity financing, led by Alameda Research, CMS Holdings, Genesis Block, NGC Ventures and other institutions.

In November 2020, Opium, a decentralized derivatives protocol, announced the completion of financing of US$3.25 million, with Alameda Research, CMS Holdings and other institutions participating in the investment.

Sam Bankman-Fried

It can be considered that, in addition to some regular cooperative investment institutions, SBF will now involve Genesis Block Venture, CMS Holdings, and Sino Global Capital in some important project investments to form a relatively closed circle of interests for better future ground management project.

Genesis Block

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Therefore, based on public reports, the chain catcher has comprehensively sorted out the institutions with high frequency of joint investment with the SBF department, and investigated the relationship between the institutions with relatively deep relationships and the SBF department, and found that there is also a deeper bond of interest behind it. .

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Founded in 2017, Genesis Block mainly operates cryptocurrency over-the-counter trading business in Hong Kong, and also owns CoinHere, one of the largest cryptocurrency ATM operators in Asia. Official website information shows that the company has received millions of dollars in investment from Alameda Research in 2020.

Through these cooperations and investments, Genesis Block and Alameda Research formed a deep interest-binding relationship, and jointly invested in two projects, Linear Finance and Persistence, in the following months.

CMS Holdings

In December, Genesis Block launched Genesis Block Ventures (GBV for short) to further strengthen the institution's layout in cryptocurrency investment. Its first action was to announce the acquisition of OMG Network (OMG), the second-layer expansion solution of Ethereum, and soon Quickly add 6,000 ETH to the liquidity of OMG tokens in the Uniswap and Sushiswap fund pools, which has attracted considerable attention in the industry.

Since then, on the one hand, GBV has actively participated in the investment of SBF projects, such as Bonfida and Maps.me. On the other hand, it has invested in crypto start-up projects with high frequency. In the past month, it has publicly invested in MahaDAO, DAO Maker, Exeedme, Poolz, SuperFarm, Paralink, Lepricon, DAOventures nearly 10 projects.

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According to the data, Ryan Salame, head of Alameda Research's over-the-counter trading business, also served as the head of Circle's Hong Kong OTC trading platform, and left Circle in June 2019. He is likely to be familiar with CMS Holdings founder Daniel Matuszewski.

In July 2020, CMS Holdings participated in the private placement round of Serum, a decentralized exchange initiated by SBF. Since then, it has started frequent collaborative investments, including Perpetual Protocol, UpBots, Linear Finance, Opium Protocol, Bonfida, Maps.me and other projects.

In September 2020, after SBF obtained control of the Sushiswap project and initiated a multi-signature governor vote, CMS Holdings participated in the election and became one of the nine multi-signature governors, which also shows the strength of CMS Holdings' support for SBF.

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Sino Global Capital is an encryption investment and consulting company located in Beijing. Its goal is to build a bridge between China and the international market. The founder, Matthew Graham, has been active in the Chinese market all year round and has a Chinese name of Matthew.

BitMax

In March 2020, the Liquid Value blockchain fund under Sino Global Capital announced that it was investing in FTX's B round of financing. , Bonfida, Maps.me and other projects have investment participation, and recently said that they will release the Maps.me investment report as soon as possible to serve as a platform for the project.

In September 2020, after SBF gained control of the Sushiswap project and launched a multi-signature governor vote, Matthew Graham also participated in the election and became one of the nine multi-signature governors, and expressed his support for SBF in multiple interviews.

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At the end of July 2019, with the support of FTX, BitMax became one of the world's first exchanges to launch FTT, and Alameda Research gradually became one of BitMax's largest quantitative trading institutions.

In October 2019, BitMax announced a strategic cooperation with FTX and Alameda Research. FTX launched the BitMax platform currency BTMX, and BitMax launched BTC, XRP and other leveraged tokens issued by FTX. Judging from SBF's statement in the press release, he mainly sees that BitMax's infrastructure and connectivity can complement Alameda's complex trading system, while increasing the liquidity and trading efficiency of its leveraged token products.

Since then, most of the coins issued by SBF will choose to jointly conduct pre-auctions with BitMax and go online for the first time, such as the tokens of Serum, Bonfida, Maps.me and other projects. This creates a stronger influence.

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Race capital (formerly Proof Of Capital)

Race capital is an encrypted venture capital fund established in April 2019 with a scale of 50 million US dollars. Its headquarter is located in San Francisco, USA. Yeung, Chris McCann, co-founder of StartupDigest, and HTC is also the LP of the fund.

Perhaps because of the opportunity brought by this investment, Chris McCann and Edith Yeung co-founded Race capital a year later. In August 2019, the FTX Exchange announced that it had obtained $8 million in seed round financing from institutions such as Proof Of Capital, and the two parties formed a close relationship of interest binding.

Three Arrows Capital

In June 2020, SBF announced the development of the decentralized exchange Serum on the Solana public chain. The high performance of the public chain may be the dominant factor, but the matching and recommendation of investors behind it may also be one of the reasons.

Three Arrows Capital

Three Arrows Capital is a Singapore-based hedge fund that has long conducted hedging transactions in the cryptocurrency secondary market and invested in crypto start-up projects. And due to the nature of the business, Three Arrows Capital has been trading on the FTX exchange for a long time, and ranks within the top 10 of its trading volume rankings.

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Multicoin Capital

NGC Capital

NGC Capital is an encryption venture capital institution established in 2017 and headquartered in Shanghai. Since August 2020, NGC Capital has started to make frequent synergistic investments with Alameda Research, with at least 7 projects as targets.

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Multicoin Capital is an overseas encryption venture capital institution established in 2017. In the past six months, it has jointly invested in at least 4 projects including Math Wallet, Perpetual Protocol, Dune Analytics, and Serum with Alameda Research.