FTX broke ground on a $60 million headquarters in the Bahamas in April. Construction never started
In April, with Bitcoin hovering around $40,000 and Three Arrows Capital and Terraform Labs still minting money, FTX broke ground on a $60 million headquarters in the Bahamas, with Prime Minister Philip Davis attending for the occasion Sam Bankman-Fried stood.
Davis hailed the event as a sign that the Bahamas was becoming a hub for international business and that FTX’s establishment would help create about 400 jobs domestically.
By local construction companies and people familiar with the matter, wealth learned that construction on the project never really started.
“Nothing was ever done,” said an employee of Mosko, a Bahamas-based construction company hired to manage the project, but declined to be named. “Site setup, that’s it. There was no excavation.”
FTX relocated its headquarters from Hong Kong to the Bahamas in September 2021, citing the favorable regulatory environment. While the company’s executives built residences in the glitzy Albany gated community and opened offices in a nearby office park, they also planned a more permanent location as the FTX empire expanded.
In January, the company unveiled plans for the $60 million campus, according to Ryan Salame, CEO of FTX Digital Markets Nassau Guardian that the facility would house 1,000 people. The company chose an office park on the north side of Nassau, overlooking the Caribbean, where it also planned to build a 38-room hotel and fitness facilities.
As FTX’s presence in the Bahamas grew, the April groundbreaking was an opportunity for the government to demonstrate its ability to attract a world-class company to the burgeoning crypto hub. The Prime Minister’s Office released a cleverly produced video.
“FTX Digital Markets has made a positive impact all over the Bahamas,” Davis explains from the off. “Today they continue to make positive impressions with the groundbreaking of their new headquarters.”
“We are building a toilet”
Construction documents viewed by wealthFTX hired leading architecture and engineering firms in the Bahamas and US including N&M Architects, Gensler, Desimone, Bron, Graphite Engineering and Terrain Design & Management.
Bron declined to comment. The rest of the companies could not immediately be reached for comment.
Mosko, the Bahamas-based construction company that has hired FTX to manage the project, has set up an office on the site which the employee said represents the scope of the development.
“We have set up a toilet,” they said.
An FTX spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
wealth visited the proposed headquarters site Tuesday, which is currently cordoned off with no sign of FTX’s presence. A security guard working for the office park said the entire crew stopped coming about two months ago and he hasn’t seen anyone at the facility for at least a month.
The only indication that it was a construction site was a sign next to the fence that read “Mosko United Construction Company Limited”.
wealth went to Mosco’s offices in an industrial park near the airport. The owner of a neighboring construction company confirmed the HQ project never got underway, saying: “We’ve been waiting for the call to send trucks down with concrete.”
The Mosco employee said he hadn’t been on site in a month, but said Mosco was only in contact with FTX last week. They gave no reason why the project was stopped, but expressed disappointment.
“It’s unfortunate,” they said. “It looked like a nice project.”
Our new weekly Impact Report newsletter will examine how ESG news and trends are shaping the roles and responsibilities of today’s leaders – and how best to address these challenges. Subscribe here.
