Given the common pay at Stanford is about $US185,000 a 12 months for a tenured professor, questions are mounting as to the provenance of their portfolio in paradise.
Joseph Bankman is known to be staying along with his son within the Bahamas. Caroline Ellison, the CEO of Alameda Research and Mr Bankman-Fried’s former girlfriend, has been offline for the reason that week of the collapse and is known to be in Hong Kong.
But the connection between Ms Ellison’s father, Glenn Ellison, who’s the top of economics at MIT, and a former MIT colleague, Gary Gensler, who’s now the US Securities and Exchange Commission chair, is beneath scrutiny. Mr Bankman-Fried has beforehand met Mr Gensler to debate crypto regulation.
As one New York-based crypto hedge fund supervisor instructed The Australian Financial Review by way of Telegram through the week: “If you pull that thread, you might find it’s attached to a Gordian knot of epic proportions. A very sticky wicket.”
2. Bahamas officers authorised among the FTX ‘hack’
Two weeks in the past $US600 million value of crypto property had been transferred out of FTX accounts, in what Mr Bankman-Fried and authorized representatives referred to as a “hack”.
But a press release from the Securities Commission of the Bahamas has revealed that officers had instructed FTX staff to take away $US477 million from the bankrupt alternate on November 12 for “safekeeping”.
The Bahamas authorities are involved that the property belonging to FTX Digital Markets, the entity included within the Bahamas, may be siphoned off to the United States as a part of the broader chapter proceedings.
There are three principal crypto wallets the place the “hacked” cash stays. Two are reportedly managed by the Bahamas authorities.
3. Hacker ‘rinsing’ the remainder of the FTX cash
I spent many of the week watching the third crypto pockets the place the remaining $US200 million largely held within the cryptocurrency Ether has began to maneuver.
Known because the “FTX Wallet Drainer”, this individual is making an attempt to promote the Ether with out transferring by means of centralised exchanges. Big exchanges equivalent to Kraken are poised to freeze any accounts this cash strikes by means of, and the FTX directors have warned that cash will in the end be recalled throughout proceedings.
The FTX Wallet Drainer has created 12 new wallets managed by non-public keys and is transferring Ether by means of these, with the target of changing it into Bitcoin.
4. Australian administrator flies to US to barter for data entry
Australia is getting concerned within the inter-jurisdictional battle over what cash and property stay.
Nearly 30,000 Australians have cash tied up in FTX Australia and FTX Express, subsidiaries of the worldwide enterprise FTX Trading. So far, KordaMentha directors have discovered $42 million in accounts hooked up to the 2 corporations however are having hassle extracting data from the worldwide enterprise to raised perceive which cash goes the place.
So on Wednesday night time, a KordaMentha administrator flew from Sydney to New York and can meet with directors to barter entry to data to assist their investigation subsequent week.
Local traders are clamouring for details about their misplaced cash. Brisbane-based alternate Digital Surge has frozen withdrawals for its SMSF prospects, and comparability web site firm Finder closed down its “Earn” product which generated a “fixed” return for traders utilizing an undisclosed technique.
5. Watching Voyager, Gemini and DCG for ‘crypto contagion’
“It’s a waiting game to see where the contagion actually lands,” Jesse Smythe, crypto trader and co-founder of Balmoral Digital, stated in Sydney this week.
While there haven’t but been any main alternate collapses simply but, traders are bracing for additional harm
Genesis Trading, a sort of crypto funding financial institution, stated it had $US175 million in its FTX buying and selling account and has needed to droop withdrawals. Another alternate BlockFi is teetering on the sting of chapter, in keeping with The Wall Street Journal.
Gemini, an alternate owned by the Winklevoss twins, warned one in every of its merchandise is uncovered to Genesis and withdrawals may be delayed.
Coinbase, Binance and Crypto.com have tried to guarantee traders they come up with the money for in reserves to resist a “run”.
Digital Currency Group, which owns Genesis, Grayscale Investments and mining firm Foundry has tried to calm investor fears as effectively. DCG owns CoinDesk, the information outlet that broke the story of Alameda’s shut relationship with FTX.
“We just haven’t fully found out who’s lending to who yet, so we don’t know where the risk is,” Mr Smythe stated.
6. FTX and Alameda Research misplaced $US3.7b earlier than 2022
The poor efficiency of the quant buying and selling agency Alameda Research was laid naked this week, after the listening to revealed that $US3.7 billion had been misplaced in trades earlier than 2022 even began.
It’s value remembering 2021 was a bull marketplace for crypto, and an explosion of speculative curiosity in NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and excessive yield-generating merchandise was churning out money for traders.
At the guts of the FTX fraud lies the revelation that FTX transferred $US10 billion in buyer cash to prop Alameda up, which had been struggling as a consequence of awful efficiency in addition to publicity to the Terra/Luna and Celsius collapse earlier this 12 months.
Despite the beneficial market situations final 12 months, it seems merchants beneath the stewardship of Ms Ellison misplaced $US3.7 billion throughout dangerous directional trades on different investments.
One massive crypto investor identified that, as a market-maker, Alameda may see different folks’s trades earlier than they occurred.
“Even playing on cheat mode they lost,” he stated.
7. Binance flags $1b fund for distressed digital property
Binance CEO (CZ) Changpeng Zhao stated on Thursday that the corporate is planning a $US1 billion fund for doable purchases of distressed digital property within the crypto sector. He additionally stated the corporate would make a bid for the bankrupt crypto lender, Voyager Digital.
Binance has been an infinite beneficiary of the FTX collapse, scooping up buying and selling exercise as institutional traders scrambled to re-allocate funds. CZ was instrumental within the FTX downfall, triggering a “bank run” after saying he deliberate to promote $US500 million value of FTT, the token that underpinned the FTX stability sheet.
Many have famous his transfer to purchase up distressed crypto property mirrors Mr Bankman-Fried’s acquisition spree that befell after the Celsius and Terra/Luna collapse earlier this 12 months.
8. Bankman-Fried to talk alongside Yellen, Zuckerberg and Volodymyr Zelensky subsequent week
Mr Bankman-Fried tweeted he’ll nonetheless seem on the New York Times Dealbook summit on November 30. The FTX founder had been invited weeks in the past, and appears set to retain his interview slot with columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin. Onlookers have expressed shock that somebody who misplaced billions in investor funds and is beneath investigation ought to seem.
Other panellists on the Summit embody US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Facebook-cum-Meta chief government Mark Zuckerberg and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, who’s spearheading the battle with Russia.
