Crypto exchange platform FTX has been all over the news lately, and not for good reasons. The now-defunct company filed for Chapter 1 bankruptcy in November, and its founder and former CEO Samuel Bankman-Fried has been involved in legal proceedings for wire fraud and conspiracy charges.
So, naturally, sort of morbid promotional products collectors pounced at the opportunity to snag FTX-branded merchandise that was supposed to go out at the Art Basel event in Miami last week.
According to Insider, FTX apparel was housed in the Solana Embassy in the Wynwood section of Miami, an education center for the Solana blockchain, a project Bankman-Fried was involved in.
The facility had around 1,000 FTX Miami T-shirts, bean bags, a signed poster of chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen, and a custom framed Miami Heat jersey featuring the FTX logo. The T-shirts were reportedly supposed to be for people who opened FTX accounts at the facility during the event.
Solana tweeted about its events at Art Basel, and said that the T-shirts would be up for grabs. Any that remained at the end of the day would be donated.
3 events today in Miami.
Highly Liquid, 10am-12 (public)
MonkePOW, 2pm-4:30
(private)
DAA x XLarge Party, 6pm-9 (public)We have about 1000 FTX Miami shirts to get rid of. If you come to the store today or tomorrow, you can take one for free.
Donating the rest this week.
— DRiP 💧 (@drip_haus) December 3, 2022
“Of course everybody was talking about it, making jokes, people were coming in to take photos with all the FTX signage we had,” Solana Spaces CEO Vibhu Norby said, according to Business Insider.
People have a real attraction to novelty products like this. Once a company becomes controversial or folds, it means that branded items are even more exclusive, and part of a larger joke within society.
You might remember in 2018 when someone bought a ton of Lehman Brothers’ leftover promotional products and started selling them on eBay.
There’s little doubt that these shirts will end up on the re-sale space in the near future. Others will probably hold onto theirs as a conversation starter or just as a relic from the crypto boom.
