Great Finance Firms · Blowups
FTX: Rise and Fall
How a crypto exchange valued at $32 billion collapsed in a week in November 2022: Alameda Research, FTT token collateral, customer funds secretly lent out, the CoinDesk leak and the run, bankruptcy, Bankman-Fried's 2023 fraud conviction, and lessons on custody and governance.
Step 1 of 5 · Overview30 min read ·
Key idea
Prereqs: Banking & runs; crypto basics. Next: Why great companies fail; crypto regulation. Sources: John J. Ray III bankruptcy declarations (Nov 2022); US v. Bankman-Fried (SDNY, verdict Nov 2023; sentence Mar 2024); Michael Lewis, *Going Infinite* (2023); WSJ.Next: 1. Timeline