In April 2022, the FTX Cryptocurrency Exchange had just broken new ground in the Bahamas for a new headquarters facility. They moved their headquarters from Hong Kong to Nassau because Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO and Founder of FTX, didn’t like the stringent COVID-19 travel restrictions there and he worried about Hong Kong’s independence in the future.
FTX planned to build a new $60 million facility to house up to 1,000 employees, including a boutique hotel for visitors and special guests. Because of these developments and, in great measure, because of the less-restrictive government, many cryptocurrency companies based in Singapore and Hong Kong started to consider this move to the friendly waters of the Bahamas. The Office of the Prime Minister of the Bahamas created an important whitepaper called “The Future of Digital Assets in the Bahamas.” It was front and center on the Prime Minister’s website. It was an invitation to see what FTX saw in their future on that Caribbean Island.