FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was considered a shambolic boy genius, worth $20 billion at his peak. In less than a week, he watched his companies disintegrate into a steaming pile of financial toxic waste. Read most detailed account yet of FTX’s final days
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Numerous FTX employees spoke to me on condition of anonymity, for fear of legal repercussions, except for Bankman-Fried. “Just, everyone left,” he told me. “I couldn’t do it alone. And, if I’m alone, then maybe I’m wrong. I am pretty impervious to pressure, but at some point, I started to feel like maybe I’m the one who’s wrong here.”Article contentOn Monday, Nov. 7, 2022, Bankman-Fried issued new orders to traders at Alameda, his crypto-trading firm.
Caroline Ellison was Alameda’s 28-year-old chief executive. A Harry Potter superfan, she wrote a blog with voluminous entries about everything from her favourite books to the merits of kayaks . She’d met Bankman-Fried during his brief stint at the Wall Street trading firm Jane Street Group LLC a decade ago.
Bankman-Fried minimized the crisis FTX was facing as a “liquidity” issue, meaning the company didn’t have enough cash on hand to meet withdrawals. It was a big problem, but a fixable one. He brushed off the idea of filing for bankruptcy protection, which would, in effect, be conceding there were profound issues at the core of the business.
It was 2 a.m. in Hong Kong when Lennix Lai’s phone buzzed. A top executive at rival crypto exchange OKX, Lai picked up to find Bankman-Fried on the other end of the line. Market panic had created a cash crunch, and FTX might need “a little bit of help,” he told Lai calmly. Customers were withdrawing money at an unsustainable rate. Lai ended the call open to lending a hand.Around 7 a.m., he woke up to another call from Nassau.
The rush to raise money seemed outrageous to some executives. Dan Friedberg, FTX’s top lawyer since 2020, thought attempting to fundraise looked like an extension of a likely fraud, he later claimed, according to court documents. Other executives felt the same. “I had the concern that … raising money was fraudulent if we didn’t tell people what was really going on,” said one.
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'Sam? Are you there?!' The bizarre and brutal final hours of FTXFTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was considered a shambolic boy genius, worth $20 billion at his peak. In less than a week, he watched his companies disintegrate into a steaming pile of financial toxic waste. Read most detailed account yet of FTX’s final days
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'Sam? Are you there?!' The bizarre and brutal final hours of FTXFTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was considered a shambolic boy genius, worth $20 billion at his peak. In less than a week, he watched his companies disintegrate into a steaming pile of financial toxic waste. Read most detailed account yet of FTX’s final days
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