Prospects don’t look good for Sam Bankman-Fried’s invitation-only Crypto Bahamas event

After FTX’s collapse and in the aftermath, people were wondering about the company’s Crypto Bahamas conference that was scheduled for April 17-20, 2023, at the Grand Hyatt Baha Mar in Nassau. The event scheduled for April 2023 was to be hosted by FTX, now in bankruptcy, and the promoters of the Salt conference, backed by Skybridge Capital.

FTX’s invitation-only event on the island appears to be a failure.

While we know that former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is planning to speak at the New York Times (NYT) Dealbook Summit, people are curious about the next Crypto Bahamas. The inaugural 2022 conference was held in Nassau and the event featured a litany of well-known speakers, including former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

Other 2022 speakers included former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, seven-time Super Bowl champion and Autograph co-founder Tom Brady, and Bahamas Prime Minister Philip “Brave“Davis. The 2023 event will likely be a failure, but with the current events surrounding the now-defunct stock exchange, one can never know.

For example, Andrew Ross Sorkin confirmed that he was speaking with SBF at the NYT Dealbook Summit, and FTX’s new CEO recently explained in bankruptcy court that some of the company’s business assets could be salvaged. As for the Crypto Bahamas conference, the Skybridge Capital funded project is underway. Salt is signed up to co-host the forum.

A lot of folks have been asking if I would still be interviewing @SBF_FTX at the @nytimes @dealbook Summit on Nov 30…

The answer is yes. 👇

There are a lot of important questions to be asked and answered.

Nothing is off limits.

Looking forward to it… https://t.co/lShAqXLKGS

– Andrew Ross Sorkin (@andrewrsorkin) November 23, 2022

Just prior to the FTX collapse and subsequent bankruptcy filing, Salt’s events page highlighted the Crypto Bahamas 2023 conference on the website. At the time of this writing, November 25, 2022 the event is still hosted on Salt’s events page and links to the Crypto Bahamas web portal. True to the SBF’s secretive lifestyle and mysterious transactions, Crypto Bahamas 2022 was an invitation-only event with 2,000 attendees.

While it is only possible to inquire with Salt about the 2023 event at this time, ticket prices for 2022 ranged from $3,000 to $5,000 per attendee at the event. In May, financial news publication Business Insider called the event is a “$614-a-night affair“.

Anthony Scaramucci told Business Insider (BI) in May that FTX executives told him they wanted to get into the conferencing business with his company. “In our debrief with our sponsors, the FTX guys wanted us to consider getting them into the conference business a little bit more with us” Scaramucci said at the time.

The Skybridge executive also noted that the 2022 event was expected to be smaller than the more than 2,000 people who ultimately attended Crypto Bahamas 2022. “Frankly, we had to start turning people away“, Scaramucci explained in his May interview with BI.

“It’s an island. So we ordered a certain amount of food and refreshments and things like that. So we just said, “Look, I’m sorry, you can’t come “, Scaramucci added. Other sponsors of Crypto Bahamas 2022 include the Solana Foundation, Galaxy Digital, Elliptic, Ripple, Blockfi and Google Cloud.

Salt just wrapped up the Salt iConnections Asia 2022 event at the exclusive Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore.