Reuters: Over $1B Missing At Bankrupt Crypto Outfit

November 12, 2022 Business, Scandal

At least $1 billion of customer funds have vanished from collapsed crypto exchange FTX, according to two people familiar with the matter. The exchange’s founder Sam Bankman-Fried secretly transferred $10 billion of customer funds from FTX to Bankman-Fried’s trading company Alameda Research, the people told Reuters.

A large portion of that total has since disappeared, they said. One source put the missing amount at about $1.7 billion. The other said the gap was between $1 billion and $2 billion.

In text messages to Reuters, Bankman-Fried said he “disagreed with the characterization” of the $10 billion transfer. “We didn’t secretly transfer,” he said. “We had confusing internal labeling and misread it,” he added, without elaborating.

Read the full article.

REUTERS: “Backdoor” allowed Bankman-Fried to execute commands to alter financial records without alerting others, including external auditors. So movement of the $10 billion in funds to Alameda did not trigger internal compliance or accounting red flags https://t.co/rgzV0TOSNY

— Eric Lipton (@EricLiptonNYT) November 12, 2022