SBF: The Trial of the Century - Exploring the Strange Company Behind FTX's Bankruptcy

[블록미디어 James Jung 기자] “A strange company has become an even stranger company.”

The trial of Sam Bankman Fried (SBF), the main culprit who caused FTX to go bankrupt, has begun. I am the United States trial of the centuryThey are excited and saying,

This is because the prosecution’s claim that “SBF, the crown prince of the cryptocurrency market whose parents were professors at prestigious universities, turned out to be a ‘scammer without any sense’” heated up the media day after day. Michael Lewis, the author of bestsellers Moneyball and The Big Short, was preparing a book about SBF even before the FTX incident.

Lewis’ book ‘Going Infinite’ was published just before the trial. The Wall Street Journal published some excerpts.

# Ripple loss incident

In the early days of founding Alameda Research, the birthplace of the FTX exchange, SBF used algorithmic trading bots to conduct cryptocurrency arbitrage. At this time, an incident occurred in which $4 million in Ripple (XRP) was lost.

Bithumb appears in the incident at that time. Around 2018, as is well known, SBF made a huge amount of money through arbitrage using the kimchi premium. The Ripple-Bithumb loss appears to have occurred during this transaction.

# Model bots are bullshit

SBF was operating a modelbot that operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for coin exchanges around the world. SBF attracted colleagues she met at Jane Street, a traditional investment firm on Wall Street, and Caroline Ellison, who later became her lover, also joined Alameda at this time.

Alameda’s model bot didn’t make money at first. He only made losses. Alameda colleagues prevented SBF from tampering with the model bot. SBF did not listen. His colleagues even wondered if they should kick him out.

SBF was also a mess as an administrator. I didn’t really know where the money came from and where it went. Although there were over 250,000 transactions per day, it was not possible to completely keep up with the transactions. Records also disappeared.

# Discord between SBF and team members

The Ripple loss incident also occurred at this time. Ripple worth $4 million disappeared. SBF treated it like it was no big deal. I thought the deposit was simply delayed due to an unknown problem between exchanges. Colleagues were furious.

Discord among team members worsened. Ultimately, most of the original members left the company in April 2018.

From then on, ‘strange things’ happened. Model bots suddenly started making money. SBF also found the lost ripple. A record of coin transfer from Kraken to Bithumb has been released.

# There were 20 million ripples on Bithumb

SBF immediately called Bithumb. After about three attempts, a call was made with Bithumb.

“Holy shit (f***)! Was it you who sent 20 million ripples? “You bird*, are you finally calling me now?”

(Are you the f—er who sent us like 20 million Ripple tokens? How the f— are you only calling us now?)

A Bithumb official said this over the phone. Even Bithumb was having a hard time knowing exactly who had sent so many Ripple coins. I later found out that the problem was that Kraken and Bithumb had different program coding.

Since then, SBF has continued to achieve success. The failure of early model bots began to be regarded as genius, disagreements with team members as lack of understanding from ordinary people, and thoughtless trading as perseverance. A strange company has become even stranger.

# The Two Faces of SBF

Lewis’s book is controversial even in the United States. This is because the book was originally planned with the active cooperation of SBF. The collapse of FTX during his writing forced Lewis to change the direction of the book.

SBF had the image of a genius programmer, an altruist, and a progressive young businessman. However, after the collapse of FTX, his careless lifestyle and lack of concept were revealed one after another. The Ripple-Bithumb loss incident is one of them.

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