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☆ How the smart money got fooled by Sam Bankman-Fried: Here's what happened to 2 hedge funds and a trader.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-14 | by ( Dakin Campbell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

3 traders tell what drew them to FTX and how they now have money stuck inside it. Wintermute, a large crypto trading firm, stopped trading on FTX, but still had some funds stuck on the US exchange, CoinDesk reported. The three traders who spoke to Insider all acknowledged having some amount of money stuck inside FTX, despite some pretty sophisticated risk management strategies. FTX's collapse was precipitated when FTX sent billions of dollars to Alameda to cover losses, The Wall Street Journal reported. Bankman-Fried may now face charges for wire fraud, the Wall Street Journal reported this week after talking with securities lawyers about how the US laws might apply.

☆ Sam Bankman-Fried's sudden turn from white knight to washout
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-12 | by ( Hannah Lang | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

But as traders rushed to withdraw funds from FTX, Bankman-Fried was in denial and told investors he was convinced the business would be rescued, according to a source familiar with the situation. Bankman-Fried also quickly became one of the largest Democratic donors in the United States, contributing $5.2 million to President Joe Biden's 2020 campaign. He amassed a fortune, estimated as high as $26.5 billion by Forbes a year ago, by taking advantage of the price differences in bitcoin in Asia and the United States. Bankman-Fried eventually started crypto trading firm Alameda Research in 2017 and founded FTX a year later. "I thought we would fail," Bankman-Fried said at a June conference weeks before FTX and Alameda extended lifelines to two struggling crypto platforms.

☆ The collapse of crypto firm FTX and its superstar founder explained: Here's what happened and what it all means
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-12 | by ( Avery Hartmans | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Two years later, Bankman-Fried and his team launched FTX, a crypto exchange platform with perks like low trading fees and advanced options for traders. At his peak, Bankman-Fried was worth $26 billion, though his net worth had dropped to $16 billion before this week. In early November, crypto publication CoinDesk released a bombshell report that called into question just how stable Bankman-Fried's empire really was. Now, the FTX drama is creating a ripple effect throughout the crypto industry. Industry experts told Insider that the saga might encourage regulators to try to crack down on the crypto industry, or make big banks wary of letting customers trade crypto.

☆ Before his epic fall, Sam Bankman-Fried was hailed as a crypto genius. Some clients saw smoke and mirrors.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-11 | by ( Gretchen Morgenson | Gretchen Morgenson Is The Senior Financial Reporter For The Nbc News Investigative Unit. A Former Stockbroker | She Won The Pulitzer Prize In For Her | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +14 min

Until a few days ago, Sam Bankman-Fried was the king of crypto. “I’m sorry I didn’t do better,” Bankman-Fried said Tuesday in a message to investors reviewed by NBC News. The contentions of the people who spoke with NBC News are echoed in a 2019 lawsuit brought in federal court against FTX Alameda, Bankman-Fried and other executives. But the crypto market does not have the protections or price transparency found in listed stock markets, for example. FTX and Alameda, as a major crypto exchange and market maker, attracted crypto developers to list their projects for trading.

☆ Factbox: Sam Bankman-Fried: The crypto mogul whose empire came crashing down
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-11 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Nov 11 (Reuters) - Sam Bankman-Fried on Friday resigned from his role as chief executive of FTX and the crypto exchange said it will initiate bankruptcy proceedings in the United States, capping off a tumultuous week for the industry. Following are some facts about the co-founder and former CEO:EDUCATION AND VENTURES BEFORE FTXBorn in 1992, Sam Bankman-Fried grew up in California. Bankman-Fried later graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a degree in physics. After a more than three-year stint at the New York-based firm, he moved to crypto trading and founded Alameda Research in 2017. The company offered trading on crypto tokens and derivatives, while also boasting of a robust risk management system.

☆ FTX's crypto empire was reportedly run by a bunch of roommates in the Bahamas who dated each other, according to the news site that helped trigger the company's sudden collapse
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-11 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

On Thursday, CoinDesk unearthed more secrets about the inner workings of Bankman-Fried's crypto empire, including the untraditional makeup of his inner circle. Those sources told CoinDesk that both operations were run by Bankman-Fried's inner circle of 10 roommates. Among the named members of Bankman-Fried's inner circle were Caroline Ellison, Alameda's current CEO. Some employees outside Bankman-Fried's inner circle noted that they were shocked by the events of the past week. "Some employees kept their life savings on FTX," an anonymous source told CoinDesk.

☆ FTX investor Sequoia removed its glowing 13,000-word profile of Sam Bankman-Fried and replaced it with somber note after its investment cratered to $0
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-10 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

VC firm Sequoia Capital removed a lengthy September profile of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried this week. The URL now shows Sequoia's note telling investors it's marking down its $214 million FTX investment to $0. The profile of Bankman-Fried recounted his first pitch to Sequoia during his Series B round. Sequoia linked to its letter about marking down its investment in FTX from around $214 million to $0. The now-removed Sequoia profile is still available to read on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

LONDON, Oct 21 (Reuters) - It's not the first time the 145-year-old London Metal Exchange (LME) has found itself in crisis. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterMarch brought Nickel Crisis II, a much scarier update of the original, and now we have the unfolding Russian Metal Crisis. It's perilous legal territory and would have a significant impact on LME price and physical premiums. Meanwhile, CME's (CME.O) cobalt contract has steadily built up liquidity since its end-2020 launch even as activity in the LME's contract has steadily dwindled. Disgruntled funds have already voted with their feet, the collective departure causing LME trading volumes to slide by 6% over the first nine months of this year.

☆ FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried breaks down his 3 favorite use cases for blockchain tech — and explains the role of regulatory oversight in crypto markets
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-13 | by ( Morgan Chittum | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Sam Bankman-Fried, also known as SBF, is the CEO and cofounder of crypto giant FTX. Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO and cofounder of crypto giant FTX, broke down three blockchain use cases in an interview at the Bipartisan Policy Center on Wednesday. In traditional equities, per Bankman-Fried, buying a share of a company can take an exuberant amount of time. Crypto regulation is 'necessary' and 'good'The 30-year-old billionaire welcomes regulation, specifically citing clear stablecoin oversight. "Crypto is big enough and starting to touch enough things that it is important to have regulatory oversight. "

☆ UK court says Elliott, Jane Street can sue LME for cancelled nickel trades
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-10 | by ( Pratima Desai | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

LONDON, Oct 10 (Reuters) - A British court has granted permission for U.S.-based hedge fund Elliot Associates and Jane Street Global Trading to sue the London Metal Exchange (LME) for cancelling nickel trades in March, a court document showed. Elliott and Jane Street are demanding damages of $456.4 million and $15.34 million respectively, after the nickel price topped a record $100,000 per tonne on March 8, prompting the LME's suspension of nickel trading and voiding of trades. The nickel trading episode has been the biggest crisis to hit the world's oldest metals forum in decades. "The LME therefore continues to consider that Elliott's and Jane Street's grounds for complaint are without merit, and the LME will defend any judicial review proceedings vigorously." Elliott Associates declined to comment and Jane Street did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

☆ Crypto exchange FTX is replacing its U.S. president
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-27 | by ( Ashley Capoot | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Brett Harrison, the U.S. president of the crypto exchange FTX, announced his resignation on Tuesday, with the company in the midst of a massive expansion effort. "I have deep gratitude for my experiences at FTX in the last year and a half," he wrote in a tweet. Harrison joined FTX, whose parent company is based in the Bahamas, in May 2021 after spending close to two years at Citadel Securities. In addition to Voyager Digital, FTX has been seeking out distressed crypto assets in the U.S. as it tries to expand its market share during the so-called crypto winter. "We really didn't mean to mislead anyone, and we didn't suggest that FTX US itself, or that crypto/non-fiat assets, benefit from FDIC insurance," Harrison wrote on Twitter at the time.

☆ Laid-off Snap employees describe 'overwhelming' recruiter outreach from Facebook, Netflix, and TikTok. Some former staffers say they got reachouts from over 70 companies.
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-20 | by ( Diamond Naga Siu | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

While the recent layoffs at Snap came as a shock, former employees found themselves in high demand, describing the resulting volume of recruiter reachouts as "overwhelming." Snap laid off about 20% of its staff earlier this month. Several laid-off staffers told Insider that since then, their inboxes and LinkedIn posts had been swarmed by recruiters from top tech companies like Google, TikTok, Amazon, Meta, and Netflix. Other companies like Unity, Dropbox, and CrowdStrike have swarmed the comment sections of former Snap employees who shared on LinkedIn that they'd been laid off. At least 20 creator-economy companies have laid off staff recently, and even some of the largest tech companies like Google and Facebook have implemented hiring freezes or layoffs.

☆ How crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried survived the market wreckage and still expanded his empire
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-16 | by ( Kate Rooney | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +11 min

FTX also extended $500 million to struggling Voyager Digital, which later declared bankruptcy, and was in discussions to acquire South Korean crypto exchange Bithumb. While Bankman-Fried's cryptocurrency exchange FTX is suffering from the downturn in digital assets, he said market share growth helped offset the pain. FTX Trading Ltd. is headquartered in Antigua, with FTX Derivatives Markets based in the Bahamas, where Bankman-Fried lives. FTX Trading has acquired companies in Switzerland, Australia, Cyprus, Germany, Gibraltar, Singapore, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, among other countries. watch nowLike Buffett, Bankman-Fried signed the Giving Pledge: a promise by the world's wealthiest individuals to donate the majority of their wealth to charity.

☆ Fear and loathing on Wall Street: Inside the paranoid, hyper-competitive onslaught to prevent quant traders from defecting to rivals
▼ + stars: | 2022-07-31 | by ( Alex Morrell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +23 min

Current and former employees at prominent quant trading operations spoke to Insider anonymously for this story, citing fear of legal reprisals. "At the NSA, the penalty for leaking is twenty-five years in prison," Simons liked to tell employees, according to Gregory Zuckerman's book "The Man Who Solved the Market." In the early 2000s, quant noncompetes were narrower and shorter — six to nine months was industry standard, quant recruiters who had to navigate these obstacles told Insider. But it has aggressively pursued employees it believes have crossed the firm, according to court filings and media reports. Absent such changes, quant noncompetes will likely continue to proliferate with little resistance from employees.

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