Shohei Ohtani is a global icon: a popular baseball player who thrived in Japan before dominating in Major League Baseball over the last few seasons. Now he’ll lend that star status to cryptocurrency exchange FTX as its latest global brand ambassador.

Today, FTX announced the alliance with Ohtani—the latest in a recent series of sports world sponsorships and signings for the rising exchange. The Los Angeles Angels pitcher will be paid in cryptocurrency and also receive equity in the company, according to a report from CNN.

Alongside his increasing global popularity, Ohtani is also unique in being both a successful pitcher and a powerful batter. He belted 46 home runs during the 2021 season, for example, but also won nine games as the Angels’ starting pitcher. That rare combination has made him one of the biggest stars in the league.

For FTX, today’s announcement only extends a recent run of splashy moves designed to help expand the brand via sports partnerships and ambassadors. FTX is much younger than leading exchange Coinbase, for example, but is trying to make up the difference in brand awareness by targeting sports and esports fans alike.

“There’s been some user growth, but we are really coming from behind on name recognition,” FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried said last week at the Decrypt and Yahoo Finance Crypto Goes Mainstream event. “We’ve been around for two and a half years. That’s a lot less long than some of the other big names in the crypto exchange business. When someone’s looking to get involved in crypto for the first time, we’ve found that they haven’t heard of FTX.”

FTX previously brought on NFL quarterback Tom Brady and NBA star Stephen Curry as fellow brand ambassadors, with both similarly receiving equity shares as part of their respective deals. The exchange also partnered with Major League Baseball as the league’s official crypto sponsor, with FTX patches appearing on the umpires’ uniforms.

The exchange also purchased naming rights for the Miami Heat’s arena, as well as for the stadium of Cal Berkeley’s football team. In the esports industry, FTX paid $210 million for naming rights to popular club Team SoloMid (now TSM FTX), and also sponsored Riot Games’ League of Legends competitions.

In September, Bankman-Fried told Decrypt Editor-in-Chief Dan Roberts that while he couldn’t prove that the sports spending was boosting user counts, he saw anecdotal evidence that it was helping with brand awareness. “You can’t just buy that with Facebook ads,” he said.

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FTX US is expanding its presence in Miami, Florida, where the crypto exchange has already established a firm foothold. 

The firm is building permanent office space for 16 to 18 employees in Miami’s financial district, according to a recent Bloomberg interview with FTX US’s vice president of business development, Avinash Dabir. 

Dabir also said there is a significant opportunity in crypto and real estate—albeit in its early stages. He reportedly imagines a time in the future when property titles could be NFTs, or escrow accounts could be handled via smart contracts. 

“I can’t think of a better place to do that. It feels like everyone I talk to is in real estate, outside of crypto,” he told Bloomberg. 

He also added that the company’s existing Miami-related partnerships, including one with Property Markets Group, will help establish and facilitate real estate transactions via cryptocurrencies. 

FTX’s growing Miami footprint

This is the latest move in FTX’s focus on the crypto-friendly city of Miami.

Earlier this year, the exchange finalized a deal with the Miami Heat that saw the NBA franchise’s home stadium renamed the FTX Arena. The deal—which is in place for 19 years—is part of FTX’s ambitious marketing push. 

Two days ago, Sam Bankman-Fried said the crypto exchange is looking to spend big on marketing—specifically sports marketing—to boost name recognition in a crowded crypto exchange space. 

“When someone’s looking to get involved in crypto for the first time, we’ve found that they haven’t heard of FTX,” the CEO said during the Decrypt and Yahoo Finance Crypto Goes Mainstream event earlier this week. 

“We’ve been around for two and a half years. That’s a lot less than some of the other big names in the crypto exchange business,” he added.

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FTX, the second most popular crypto exchange after Binance, has announced it’s riding on a new valuation of $25 billion after raising $420,690,000 in a funding round of 69 investors, including the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan and asset management giants BlackRock and Tiger Global. 

The new funding round comes just three months after FTX raised $900 million in a Series B featuring Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, and Coinbase Ventures. 

Since the July raise and a valuation of $18 billion, the crypto exchange has grown by leaps and bounds. 

The crypto exchange’s user base has reportedly grown by 48% and its average trade volume has increased by 75%. On average, it handled around $13 billion worth of daily trading this month.

The new funds will be put towards addressing “adjacent market opportunities including equities, prediction markets, NFTs and videogame partnerships,” said FTX’s head of product, Ramnik Arora. “We expect to make strategic investments designed to grow the business and expand our regulatory coverage.”

FTX in recent news

In September, FTX relocated from Hong Kong to the more Bitcoin-friendly Bahamas. 

FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman Fried said on Twitter that “The Bahamas is one of the few places to set up a comprehensive framework for crypto,” adding that the country “has emerged from COVID lively, safe, and without quarantine.” 

Earlier this month, reports emerged that FTX was also planning on setting up a Political Action Committee, or PAC. A PAC pools contributions from its members to assist with lobbying efforts and is then able to donate up to $5,000 to any political candidate. 

Despite the reports, FTX denied it was setting up a PAC.

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FTX exchange has announced the expansion of the crypto exchange via two subsidiaries, one in Gibraltar and the other in the Bahamas. 

Zubr Exchange Limited, owner and operator of ZUBR, a Gibraltar-based digital asset derivatives exchange, has been authorized by the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission to become a distributed ledger technology provider. 

FTX Trading Limited, owner and operator of leading global cryptocurrency exchange FTX.com, announced also today that its subsidiary FTX Digital markets was recognized as a digital assets business under the Securities Commission of the Bahamas. 

“We are committed to maintaining a close working relationship with local regulators so that together we can navigate putting a comprehensive regulatory framework in place to help promote the growth of this nascent asset class,” Bankman-Fried said in a prepared statement. 

The CEO and founder of FTX has made regulations a key focus of his company’s expansion of late. “Every time there’s a scam in crypto,” he told Business Insider, “that’s going to be pushed by regulators to lock down the industry more.” Bankman-Fried has also said that “this doesn’t need to be a war” with regulators earlier this month. 

SEC Chairman Gary Gensler is one such regulator. Back in August, he joined U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren in saying that the crypto industry needs “rules of the road” and that it must “come within public policy frameworks.” 

Although Gibraltar and the Bahamas are much smaller jurisdictions than the United States, pivoting to these two countries would suggest that FTX is leaning into regulations rather than trying to skirt them. 

FTX’s ongoing expansion

FTX’s announcements come amidst the FTX token (FTT) hitting an all-time high earlier this month. 

On September 7, 2021, FTT rose to a record price of $83. This, in turn, followed the exchange launching its very own NFT platform for US users. 

In July, FTX raised $900 million that Bankman-Fried said would largely go towards future mergers and acquisitions. At the time, the exchange reached a lofty valuation of $18 billion. 

FTX has also made waves in the sports industry, after becoming the naming rights sponsor of Miami Heat’s stadium—the FTX Arena—in May of this year.

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Just this weekend, NBA All Star Steph Curry was asking for advice about how to get started in cryptocurrency.

He must be a quick learner because, as of today, he’ll be giving it.

The Golden State Warriors point guard has signed a deal to be a “global ambassador” for FTX Trading Limited, which runs the FTX global crypto exchange and FTX US exchange. As part of the deal, he’ll receive a stake in the company, and FTX will make annual contributions to the Eat.Learn.Play foundation, run by Curry and his wife.

“I’m excited to partner with a company that demystifies the crypto space and eliminates the intimidation factor for first-time users,” said Curry in a press release, no longer mystified. As an ambassador, he’ll help “expand the reach of the FTX brand and tout the viability of cryptocurrency to new audiences around the world.”

Curry isn’t a complete newbie to cryptocurrency. Late last month, he spent 55 ETH (then worth $180,000) on a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT—digital assets representing illustrated simians. Afterward, fans inundated his Ethereum wallet with other NFTs.

Today’s announcement indicates that Curry was giving the social media version of a pump fake when he wrote last night: “Just getting started in the crypto game…y’all got any advice??” The tweet generated over 18,000 comments, including from Bitcoin maximalist Michael Saylor and crypto minimalist Frances Coppola.

Given FTX’s sports marketing playbook, adding Curry to its roster makes sense. The exchange reached a 19-year, $135 million deal for the naming rights to the Miami Heat arena in May. Additionally, it signed Tampa Bay quarterback Tom Brady as a brand ambassador in June. That deal also contained a charity element, as the exchange had vowed to donate 1% of net fees to charity; the FTX Foundation says it has given the equivalent of $3.75 million to charity thus far, including $50,000 to Brady’s TB12 Foundation. Another $12.7 million has reportedly been earmarked from user donations and user fees.

“After meeting and speaking with Stephen, it was clear that he is a seamless fit for FTX,” said FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, who praised Curry’s charitable endeavors and investing IQ.

FTX’s emphasis on sponsorships and eye-popping deals has helped the derivatives and spot exchange rise in the ranks this year to become one of the largest by volume in the world. Its FTX US platform, however, remains well behind American competitors such as Coinbase and Kraken.

Steph taking the ball, though, may be enough to spur a second-half rally.

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