SBF

Chapter 8Early Alameda

In January 2018, Juan Benet decided to help convene a group to talk about investing in Alameda Research.

Benet is one of the industry's big brains. He created two distributed ways of managing data storage: the Interplanetary File System and Filecoin. They break up data, encrypt it, and tuck it on hard drives all over the world, with people who have no idea what they are keeping safe. These systems create an alternative to huge, centralized data centers. Benet also had a hand in launching CoinList, a straightlaced token launching project.

Benet had closed the largest initial coin offering to date a few months before, $257 million for Filecoin. He couldn't do the meeting, but he wanted to get some of the best folks in San Francisco's crypto scene together to meet this guy who had made an impression on him: Sam Bankman‐Fried.

Benet did not reply to my request for comment on this arrangement.

Benet asked Polychain if it could put together a meeting of potential investors. A knowledgeable source told me that in the room was Olaf Carlson‐Wee, Polychain's founder; Ryan Zurrer, on the team; Richard Craib, CEO of Numerai, a hedge fund that had a token; and Fred Ehrsam, a cofounder of Coinbase. It was a nighttime meeting, at 8:30 p.m. local time.

My account of this meeting comes from Craib, a source familiar with the events, and SBF. This meeting has not been previously reported.

Craib immediately thought the whole arrangement was unusual. Typically a founder meets ...