Two former employees of FTX and Alameda Research have launched a new cryptocurrency exchange, Backpack. Following a series A funding round, the company has been valued at $120 million. Founded in October 2023, this development comes 11 months after the bankruptcy and collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
Backpack is a Dubai-based firm spearheaded by Armani Ferrante and Can Sun. Ferrante previously worked with Alameda Research, while Sun served as the former general counsel of FTX. Sun also testified as a witness in the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried after signing a no-prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice. Bankman-Fried was found guilty of committing $8 billion in fraud before FTX declared bankruptcy in November 2022. According to crypto.news, Backpack has already onboarded 420,000 users worldwide and recorded $6.5 billion in one-way trading volume in February.
The launch of Backpack was financially supported by several venture capitalists including Placeholder VC, Robot Ventures, Selini Capital, Amber Group among others. Although Backpack does not currently hold a virtual-asset service providing license in the United States, it intends to obtain required licensing in select states. Yahoo Finance reports that Ferrante and Sun aim to sell a 10% stake in Backpack for over $100 million to raise capital. During FTX's collapse, Ferrante lost nearly $20 million that he had raised through investments weeks prior to the incident.
Bloomberg reports that Ferrante entered the crypto industry after studying computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He started working on Alameda's trading system in 2018 and later played an instrumental role in developing the Solana blockchain. After earning a law degree from Yale and a doctorate in electrical engineering from Princeton, Sun served as general counsel for FTX from August 2021 until its bankruptcy in November 2022.
