Pantera, ParaFi and other institutions acquire MPLX tokens held by FTX at a discounted price

According to sources cited by The Block, several cryptocurrency funds, including Pantera Capital and ParaFi Capital, have recently purchased a large amount of Metaplex (MPLX) tokens from Wave Digital Assets. The funds involved in the transaction have also confirmed this news, stating that these tokens were initially held by legacy assets from FTX's bankruptcy.

The MPLX tokens held by FTX have been sold out

The source cited bankruptcy documents stating that initially 72.6 million MPLX tokens were held in FTX's legacy assets, of which 62.6 million were privately sold in the past five months, making up all unlocked MPLX tokens in FTX assets at the time. In addition, sources cited on chain data stating that an additional 2.5 million tokens were transferred from FTX wallets last month, leaving only 7.5 million tokens to be sold, which will be fully unlocked on September 19th.

Metaplex is a Solana based protocol that supports the creation of digital assets including both fungible tokens (FT) and non fungible tokens (NFT). Since its launch in 2021, Metaplex claims that its platform has facilitated the minting of over 550 million assets, covering 55 million independent wallets.

MPLX institutional acquisition price

Modular Capital is one of the funds that purchased MPLX from Wave Digital. James Ho, co-founder and managing partner of the company, stated:

The Metaplex standard has been adopted by top projects such as Helium, Tiplink, Driphaus, Pump.fun, and Reflect, covering various application scenarios from decentralized physical infrastructure (DePINs) to payments, messaging, and creator economics. Since 2024, Metaplex has generated a cost of 70000 SOLs, equivalent to approximately $13 to $14 million annually. We believe that Metaplex has a bright future, and its complete infrastructure standard suite can provide support for creators and token issuers

It is reported that Modular Capital purchased approximately 700000 tokens in April at an average price of $0.21 per token, with discounts ranging from 25% to 30% at the time. According to CoinGecko's data, the current price of MPLX is $0.25, with a fully diluted valuation of approximately $245 million.

Is MPLX undervalued by the market?

Ryan Watkins, co-founder of Syncrace Capital, stated that MPLX is still being overlooked by the market and traded at an undervalued price to earnings ratio. Ryan Watkins believes that Metaplex is an important infrastructure for Solana's digital asset economy and will ultimately become one of the most valuable projects on Solana. Ryan Watkins confirmed that Syncrace purchased MPLX tokens worth $1.4 million in April at a price of $0.2 per token, with a discount of approximately 40% at the time.

In addition to the two funds mentioned above, institutions such as Pantera, ParaFi, and Theia Blockchain have also purchased MPLX tokens from Wave Digital. Theia's co-founder Felipe Montealegre confirmed the transaction but refused to provide specific details. On the other hand, sources have revealed that Pantera Capital and ParaFi Capital jointly led the purchase of MPLX.

Cosmo Jiang, portfolio manager at Pantera Capital, confirmed that the institution is a holder of the MPLX token and stated that Metaplex aligns with Pantera's long-term investment strategy, which focuses on high-quality agreements with market fit and potential for value growth. And ParaFi Capital's investor Josh Solesbury also confirmed their investment in MPLX.