Ikigai drama: Amid the FTX debacle which continues to evolve day by day, the full extent of the knock-on effects is slowly coming to light. The most recent victim of crypto’s ‘Lehman Moment’ is Ikigai, a hedge fund manager founded by Travis Kling who took to Twitter to disclose the fund’s exposure to FTX.
Commenting on the situation, Kling took responsibility saying:
“It was entirely my fault and not anyone else’s. 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.”
He added that he was uncertain about what was going to happen next, but that he would keep trading the assets left that weren’t stuck on FTX. In a later thread he said, “Right now, it’s really hard to say. At some point, we’ll be able to make a better call on whether Ikigai is going to keep going or just move into winddown mode”.
Ikigai and FTX
Fortunately, the firm’s venture fund remained unscathed by the FTX collapse, however he did comment on an introspective note that, “We’re also going to make a decision about what to do with our venture fund”.
Kling was “at a loss for words at the depth & breadth of the pieces of shit that permeate crypto”, saying that “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 concluded saying, “Bitcoin is trustless. Then we built all these trusted things around it, and those things have failed catastrophically”.
“It’s obvious now that the space has not done enough to identify and expel bad actors. We’re letting way too many sociopaths get way too powerful and then we all pay the price. If Ikigai continues on, we pledge to fight harder in this regard. It’s a fight worth fighting.”
While some high profile names such as Mike Alfred, Nic Carter and Dan Held offered their support, others such as Andy Edstrom were “shocked and appalled”. There is surely more to come from this FTX saga.
