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Backpack, cryptocurrency Wallet and exchange Popular among Solana users, it was acquired by FTX EU for $32.7 million.
In purchasing the European arm of the defunct exchange, Backpack — started by FTX and Alameda alumni — will gain access to more than 110,000 former FTX EU users, Backpack CEO Armani Ferrante told me. Furthermore, it inherits FTX EU's European regulatory license which will allow European users to trade perpetual futures contracts, which are very popular among cryptocurrency traders.
The deal was signed back in April 2024, and Backpack spent the next eight months conducting due diligence with regulators, Ferrante said. Upon purchase of FTX EU, Backpack is now responsible for distributing bankruptcy claims to Former stock exchange clients.
Ferrante previously worked at Alameda Research, a research and trading company working in this space It wasn't quite like that Mix bank accounts with FTX. Backpack Wallet co-founder Tristan Yver, who just resigned from his operating position at the company, was head of strategy at FTX US.
FTX is associated with Solana because it built its own Serum DEX on the network in 2020 and it is Widely credited By helping put the network on the radars of cryptocurrency investors in Solana's early days.
Backpack has never been shy about calling FTX, and it's pitching this acquisition in part as a way to get customers' money back. “FTX EU users have been waiting for their distribution for a very long time. We thought we could do it faster and more efficiently,” Ferrante said.
Those connections aside, this deal seems a bit surprising at first glance, because FTX clearly doesn't have any employees or proprietary technology that Backpack has access to. Backpack also now has to distribute bankruptcy claims, which it didn't have to do before.
Perhaps the most lucrative part of the deal is FTX's MiFID II license which allows Backpack to offer trading services including criminality in Europe. Ferrante told me that convincing regulators to reactivate FTX's license — which had been suspended after the stock market crash — was part of what took so long for the deal to be finalized.
Europe is a large trading market, and a large portion of cryptocurrency trading volume comes in the form of crime, Ferrante said in an email. “However, there are no compatible offers for cryptocurrency futures on the market right now in Europe.”
A Coinbase spokesperson said the exchange purchased an EU MiFID II entity last year, and plans to "expand our derivatives offerings from the EU in due course."
Cryptocurrency derivatives were also relevant to the only other acquisition after the FTX collapse: It Sold derivatives platform LedgerX to a Miami-based holding company for $50 million in 2023.
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