SBF

Chapter 40Departures

Pierre Rochard was not the only one who called problems at FTX before it went south. He just did it earlier and louder.

Ishan Bhaidani, a young hobbyist trader and marketing pro, also called it. He did it in October, a month before November's revelations. On October 5, 2022, he kicked off a 20‐tweet thread about the problems he saw in the Samglomerate:

Im taking all of my capital out of @FTX_Official and going short $FTT

FTX has been swinging and missing all year long on so many activations

AND

Something shady is going on at FTX.

His chief complaints included lackluster product development on the exchange, failure to launch a stablecoin like the other big exchanges, SBF's insistence on chasing every hot trend, and also saying yes to every TV interview.

His 11^th tweet had no text. It was just a quote tweet of someone else that had shared a photo of SBF with a goofy grin sitting next to supermodel Gisele Bündchen.

Bhaidani didn't even give lip service to the notion that Alameda and FTX were two different entities. He just threw its investment list in his thread, pronouncing it “Pretty underwhelming for an A Tier Brand.”

Bhaidani and I spoke following the bankruptcy announcement, and he told me his short on ftt had been his best trade all year. He'd earned enough to pull his portfolio nearly back to homeostasis after months of bleeding.

But Bhaidani also ...