bnguyen@insider.com (Britney Nguyen)
- The Solana Embassy, once backed by Sam Bankman-Fried, gave away free FTX t-shirts at Art Basel.
- FTX merchandise was placed in the space storage room, but people still wanted to take pictures with it.
- Bankman-Fried had promised a $100 million investment in game projects on the Solana blockchain.
Crypto companies have been a mainstay at Art Basel Miami Beach for the past few years, and while Sam Bankman-Fried may be busy leading a Bahamas media tourhis fallen company FTX was still represented.
Merchandise from the now bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange has been seen in a storage room at the Solana Embassy in Wynwood – a store and education center for the Solana blockchain, which was once backed by Bankman-Fried, Bloomberg reported.
Among the stash were nearly 1,000 FTX Miami t-shirts, FTX beanbags, a framed Miami Heat jersey bearing the FTX logo, and a signed poster of chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen who participated in an FTX-sponsored tournament.
Solana tweeted about his events in Miami and said he had “about 1,000 FTX Miami shirts to get rid of.”
“If you come to the store today or tomorrow you can grab one for free,” the Solana Spaces account tweeted. “Give the rest this week.”
The t-shirts were originally only supposed to be free for those who opened FTX accounts at the Solana Embassy. Now these are potential collectibles.
Jordan Prince, a blockchain developer, told Bloomberg that picking up an FTX t-shirt is like having a memento from collapsed investment bank Lehman Brothers.
“Of course, everyone was talking about it, making jokes, people were coming to take pictures with all the FTX signage we had,” Vibhu Norby, CEO of Solana Spaces, told Bloomberg.
The Solana Embassy previously housed a FTX Lounge, and the exchange was its largest financial sponsor, according to Norby. Bankman Fried previously pledged $100 million investment in game projects on the Solana blockchain.
The price of Solana’s token, SOL, fell to $13.50 in early December, having been worth more than $30 early last month before FTX collapsed.
“I feel really bad about what’s happening to Solana — at the end of the day, it’s its own community with its own product,” Bankman-Fried said in a Interview on Twitter spaces Last weekend.