Galaxy Digital (GLXY), the cryptocurrency financial services firm headed by Mike Novogratz, is looking to buy more assets from bankrupt crypto companies after securing a deal to sell bitcoin and ether owned by crypto exchange FTX on behalf of the estate's management, the Financial Times reported.

That deal, from August, tripled Galaxy's assets under management to $5.3 billion, according to the FT. Galaxy subsequently also received court approval to sell FTX's shares of Grayscale and Bitwise investment funds.

Galaxy's global head of asset management, Steve Kurz, told the FT it is looking to repeat the experience with other bankrupt companies. That includes firms FTX invested in as a venture capital provider. In December last year, the New York-based company won an auction to buy self-custody platform GK8 from bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network.

"We have a crypto venture team that has been investing off our balance sheet for five years," Kurz said, according to the newspaper. "The record that we have on that side of our asset management business means we'd be a good candidate for something like that."

The company, whose Toronto-traded shares lost about 80% last year, has applied for a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) with Invesco. In April, it said it was teaming up with asset manager DWS to develop exchange-traded products (ETPs) in Europe.

Galaxy Digital Mike Novogratz FTX Collapse Bankruptcy

Sheldon Reback

Sheldon Reback is CoinDesk's European news editor. Before joining the company, he spent 26 years as an editor at Bloomberg News, where he worked on beats as diverse as stock markets and the retail industry as well as covering the dot-com bubble of 2000-2002. He subsequently managed the Bloomberg Terminal's main news page before becoming the European editor for a global project to produce short, chart-based stories across the newsroom. His previous work as a journalist took him to Hong Kong, where he reported and edited for several technology magazines, and he also has experience in market research and writing computer manuals. Sheldon has an MBA from the London Business School and an industrial chemistry degree from Brunel University. He owns a small amount of ether.