The CEO of Temasek described the agonizing experience of having to write down its $275 million investment in FTX.
Temasek, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, has announced that it has no current intentions to invest in cryptocurrency exchanges due to regulatory uncertainty in the market, according to Chief Investment Officer Rohit Sipahimani.
During his interview with CNBC on Tuesday, July 11, Sipahimalani stated, “There’s a lot of regulatory uncertainty in this environment. And I do think that be very difficult for us to make another investment and exchange in the middle of all this regulatory uncertainty”.
Temasek has refrained from investing directly in cryptocurrencies for a very long time. However, it adopted an alternative strategy by supporting service providers in the cryptocurrency space. Temasek’s $275 million wager on the crypto exchange FTX failed miserably when the exchange collapsed in November 2022.
Immediately after that, FTX resolved to write off its entire investment in the exchange. Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced originator of FTX, significantly misled Temasek, according to their chief executive officer.
Sipahimalani stated, “If there’s a management that is committed to doing fraud, no matter how much diligence you do, it’s very difficult to uncover that,” At the beginning of this year, Temasek also reduced compensation for those who suggested investments in FTX.
Temasek on Cryptocurrency Policy
Temasek stated they have halted their crypto investment endeavors because the regulatory climate has not been favorable. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged Binance and Coinbase, two of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, operating as unregistered securities exchanges last month.
But Temasek does not abandon all faith and remains optimistic about future considerations. Sipahimalani stated, “If you have the right regulatory framework, and we are comfortable with it, and you have the right investment opportunity, there’s no reason for us to not to look at it,”
“But as I said, at this point in time, we would not be comfortable investing in exchanges given the way things are right now,” he continued.
