Former FTX European head buys Titanic victim's gold pocket watch for nearly $1.5 million

According to BlockBeats, on May 2, Patrick Gruhn, a German fintech entrepreneur and former head of European business at cryptocurrency exchange FTX, bought a gold pocket watch that survived the sinking of the Titanic for a whopping £1.175 million (about $1.5 million) last Saturday, setting a record for the highest auction of Titanic-related artifacts. This 14K gold pocket watch originally belonged to John Jacob Astor IV, the richest passenger on the Titanic at the time and an American real estate tycoon. After placing his wife in a lifeboat, Astor chose to die with the Titanic. On the night of the incident, someone witnessed Astor smoking on the deck until the ship sank into the icy Atlantic. A week later, salvage workers found this gold watch engraved with his initials on Astor's body, and the watch was still moving. According to auction house Henry Aldridge & Son, Gruhn bought the pocket watch as a gift to his wife, Maren Gruhn, and they plan to exhibit this historical relic in a museum in the United States so that the public can see it. It is worth mentioning that Gruhn was the head of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF)'s European business. At the end of 2022, SBF was arrested on fraud charges and FTX went bankrupt. Gruhn said he was unaware of SBF's fraud before FTX collapsed. He bought the pocket watch with the funds from the sale of the European business. At present, Gruhn has founded a new crypto derivatives exchange in Europe and operates a German Catholic TV network. (WSJ)