A lawyer for Mr. Bankman-Fried and spokespeople for FTX, its new CEO, and Alameda didn’t respond to requests for comment. Mr. Wang’s lawyer has said that his client has accepted responsibility for his actions. Ms. Ellison has apologized for her role in the collapse.give away some of its profits as effective altruism
Meanwhile, Alameda’s trading algorithm, which was designed to make a large number of automated, rapid-fire trades, was losing money by guessing the wrong way on price moves, according to people familiar with the trading. “We know the owner of Alameda and consider him of the highest reputation in the industry,” Daniel Friedberg wrote on the letterhead of his law firm, Fenwick & West LLP. He later took a job as FTX’s chief regulatory officer. Neither Mr. Friedberg nor his former law firm responded to requests for comment.
The failure of several exchanges used by investors to buy and sell crypto inspired Mr. Bankman-Fried to start his own. The idea, he told many people, was to build an operation that would cater to institutional investors looking for a safe place to do business. He told Mr. Wang, his co-founder, to write code that would allow Alameda to carry a negative balance on FTX, regardless of how much collateral it posted with the exchange, the SEC said. Mr. Bankman-Fried also made sure that Alameda’s collateral on FTX wouldn’t automatically be sold if its value fell below a certain level, the SEC said.
When brokerage firm Crypto Finance Group asked FTX for the paperwork it needed to trade on FTX, the exchange sent over a scan of its ownership structure on a sheet of paper with an Alameda watermark, said Patrick Heusser, the brokerage’s chief commercial officer. FTX asked for any dollar transfers to be sent to Alameda, he said.Some FTX and Alameda clients worried that Alameda might profit from trading information gleaned from FTX.
Alameda made over $1 billion in profits in 2021, according to people familiar with the results. That year, cryptocurrencies of all kinds soared, even ones created as a joke.Kenny Wassus/The Wall Street Journal Although by then Mr. Bankman-Fried had stepped down as CEO of Alameda, he continued to be deeply involved in its decision-making, according to the SEC.
Someone post the article pls
Just waiting for Binance and Tether bombs to drop. It's coming......
Can't fractionally reserve Bitcoin for any meaningful amount of time. Fiat games don't work with the king 👑
Thanks for the amazing investigative reporting on this (again from WSJ is not suprising to me). Really enjoying this angle & Happy New Year (time zones globally noted & generally inclusive)! 😊
Stanford and MIT pedigrees run deep through this elitist fraud.
Is WSJ so gullible? It is shocking to see this kind of articles