30s Summary

Venture capital firm Superscrypt, backed by Singapore’s state-owned investment firm Temasek, aims to raise $100 million to establish a new investment fund in partnership with fintech business Republic. In 2022, Temasek made headlines after losing $275 million when its investment, FTX, collapsed. The state-owned investment firm had bought stakes in FTX and its US entity in 2021. Despite the loss, Temasek’s officials stated that there were no indications of any irregularities. The significant loss led to a pay cut for key responsible persons and a class-action lawsuit against them, even though the loss was only 0.09% of Temasek’s total assets.

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So, there’s this venture capital firm called Superscrypt which focuses on blockchain and Web3. This firm, which is supported by Singapore’s state-owned investment firm Temasek, is apparently trying to raise $100 million so they can set up a new investment fund.

According to Bloomberg, insiders have said that Superscrypt and a fintech business called Republic will both be partners in this new fund. It’s all just in the planning stage right now and some details might still change.

In more recent memory, Temasek caused a bit of a stir in 2022 when the firm lost a whopping $275 million after FTX, the company they’d invested in, went belly up.

Just a year before the FTX fiasco, in 2021, Temasek had bought a 1% stake in FTX for around $210 million. That’s not all, they also got a 1.5% minority interest in FTX US which is a separate entity, for an additional $65 million.

After FTX went under, Temasek confirmed there was no sign of any shady dealings or warning signs. Despite this, the Singapore government faced a lot of public backlash for its inability to spot the risk before FTX’s collapse and failing to protect the investors from losing their money.

Lawrence Wong, who was the deputy prime minister of Singapore at the time, mentioned that this whole FTX disaster did some serious damage to Temasek’s street cred with the market players.

To make amends, in May 2023, Temasek cut the pay of some top-dogs who were responsible for the FTX investment, claiming they personally messed up with their investment decision. Despite the $275 million loss creating bad vibes against the firm, this hit accounted for only 0.09% of Temasek’s total assets, which were at $293 billion at that time.

But the aftermath didn’t stop there, Temasek along with other investors like Sequoia Capital and Softbank, were faced with a class action lawsuit in August 2023. The folks filing the lawsuit believed these firms had knowingly supported fraud at the exchange.