Alameda Research

The cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried was expected to make his initial US court appearance Thursday on charges that he swindled investors and looted customer deposits on his FTX trading platform. Bankman-Fried, arrested in the Bahamas last week, was flown to New York late Wednesday after deciding not to challenge his extradition. While he was in the air, the US attorney in Manhattan announced that two of Bankman-Fried's closest business associates had also been charged and had secretly pleaded guilty.…

Sam Bankman-Fried was released on a $250 million bond package on Thursday while he awaits trial on fraud charges related to the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have accused him of stealing billions of dollars in FTX customer funds to plug losses at his hedge fund, Alameda Research. Bankman-Fried was not asked to enter a plea on Thursday. He has previously acknowledged risk-management failures at FTX, but has said he does not believe he has criminal liability. His defense lawyer, Mark…

Sam Bankman-Fried and other FTX executives received billions of dollars in secret loans from the crypto mogul's trading firm Alameda Research, the hedge fund's former chief told a judge when she pleaded guilty to her role in the exchange's collapse. Caroline Ellison, former chief executive of Alameda Research, said she agreed with Bankman-Fried to hide from FTX's investors, lenders and customers that the hedge fund could borrow unlimited sums from the exchange, according a transcript of her Dec. 19 plea hearing that was…

CEO of Alameda Research, Caroline Ellison, (left) and FTX co-founder Gary Wang (right), both of whom have pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges.Screenshot: Twitter / Publish0xTwo executives connected to FTX, the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange once valued at $32 billion, have pleaded guilty to criminal charges, according to U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, who made the announcement in a video statement released online late Wednesday. And that’s really bad news for FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, because the executives…

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried diverted customer funds from the start of his cryptocurrency exchange to support his hedge fund, Alameda Research, and to make venture investments, real-estate purchases and political donations, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged in a lawsuit filed Tuesday.The SEC said those moves were concealed from Silicon Valley investors who poured $1.8 billion into FTX. U.S. investors contributed $1.1 billion of that total. Mr. Bankman-Fried also failed to…

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the collapsed exchange FTX, always stood apart from other cryptocurrency entrepreneurs, and it wasn’t for his baggy shorts or taste in videogames.Both his parents, as Mr. Bankman-Fried would note in meetings with Washington policy makers, are professors at Stanford Law School. Their reputations were a credential to their son as he grew his crypto empire, even to those inclined to see little value in the industry. FTX failed last month, brought down after…

Over the course of a decade, the La Jolla, California-based company transformed itself from a bank catering to small businesses into a publicly traded firm. Silvergate Capital Corp. was dealing with the same problem many small US banks face: How do you differentiate yourself when larger competitors do everything you do, only better?The solution it found was to focus on a sector other banks didn't want to touch: cryptocurrency. Over the course of a decade, the La Jolla, California-based company transformed itself from a…

US prosecutors are said to be investigating Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of collapsed crypto exchange FTX and its sister trading platform Alameda Research. The latest twist in the downfall of crypto maven Sam Bankman-Fried is prompting a reexamination of the implosion of the Terra algorithmic stablecoin ecosystem that wiped out around $40 billion in market value earlier this year.US prosecutors are said to be investigating Bankman-Fried, the founder of collapsed crypto exchange FTX and its sister trading platform…

Screenshot: YouTubeSam Bankman-Fried, the founder of hedge fund Alameda Research and crypto platform FTX, was a frequent guest on both mainstream financial news and more niche crypto podcasts. And while digging through his media appearances over the years, Gizmodo has stumbled upon a very weird analogy from SBF, as he was often known, where the now-former billionaire explained that massive fraud at Enron wouldn’t have been possible if the company used the blockchain.SBF appeared on the “Jax Jones and Martin Warner Show”…

And he said he couldn’t rule out the possibility that money deposited by FTX customers who were told their money was theirs alone was in fact lent to Alameda. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Bankman-Fried distanced himself from Alameda, saying he had stepped back from running the firm and had little insight into its workings even though he owned 90% of it. Some FTX customers made deposits by wiring money to Alameda-controlled bank accounts, with the intention that the money be used to fund…