Chapter 42Nine Days in November
Ian Allison published a story in CoinDesk, and from that moment on, Sam Bankman‐Fried had fallen off a metaphorical yacht of start‐up mega success and he was swimming in a vast ocean of personal fault, alone, outmatched by the sea. In the first moments, he thought he could swim. He was swimming, in fact, but he couldn't see that he'd been caught in an enormous but slow‐moving whirlpool. It had him trapped, he just couldn't tell. He couldn't see the shore and he didn't know he wasn't getting any closer. But he swam and swam.
He might as well have just treaded water and watched the stars in the sky.
It was already over.
The title of Allison's post was, “Divisions in Sam Bankman‐Fried's Crypto Empire Blur on His Trading Titan Alameda's Balance Sheet.” The original version, before they updated it with an extraneous quote and a no‐comment from Alameda, ran only about 450 words. The CFTC would specifically cite it as the first event under “November 2022 Collapse of FTX Trading and Alameda” in its complaint.
Name a single dispatch that's had more impact on the industry this year, on the business world this year. I can't. It might be the most impactful single post in all of the news in some time.
The story came out on Wednesday, November 2. By Friday, November 11, it was all over. Very nearly the whole of SBF's empire was in bankruptcy, and another man was CEO. FTX as he'd known it was finished, and it started with a tiny story on an industry news site. ...
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