Backpack had about 90% of its capital on FTX at collapse, says founder

Backpack had about 90% of its capital parked on FTX when the exchange imploded in November 2022. Founder and CEO Armani Ferrante has been retelling that story publicly, and it is not the usual founder origin myth. Ferrante’s account matters now because Backpack is no longer a scrappy Solana wallet. It is a regulated exchange that owns what used to be FTX Europe. The hole FTX left The research behind Ferrante’s comments puts the loss at approximately $14.5 million. That figure represents somewhere between 88% and 90% of Backpack’s operating capital at the time. The timing made it worse. In September 2022, just weeks before the collapse, FTX Ventures co-led a $20 million funding round in Backpack. The investor and the custodian turned out to be the same sinking ship. Ferrante discussed the exposure publicly during an October 19, 2026 interview. He has recounted the episode across several conversations, framing it as the defining crisis of the company’s early life. Before founding Backpack, Ferrante worked at Alameda Research, the trading firm whose entanglement with FTX sat at the center of the 2022 failure. He is also known for building Anchor, a widely used development framework fo...