Sam Bankman-Fried: the Future of the FTX Foundation and the Alameda Luminosity Exchange and his Failure to Give Up

Sam Bankman-Fried woke up on Monday still a billionaire, even as his cryptocurrency empire was beginning to unravel. By Friday, his fortune was completely wiped out.

The company has decided to file for Chapter 11 in the US and that founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has resigned. Seamus Hughes pointed out that the bankruptcy filing itself is now available (pdf), and it lists a total of 134 corporate entities included in today’s announcement, as well as the proposed appointment of crypto investor Stephen Neal as chairman of the board for FTX and Alameda.

Bankman-Fried tries to make as much money as possible in order to give away. But the fate of his philanthropic endeavors is now in doubt.

On Thursday, the entire staff of the FTX Future Fund, which says it has committed $160 million in grants, publicly quit. In a statement, the five-person team wrote that they “have fundamental questions about the legitimacy and integrity of the business operations that were funding the FTX Foundation and the Future Fund.”

Neal will not be taking over. saying that he is “unable to serve in that position for reasons having nothing to do with FTX, Inc. or its former CEO.”

The Blockfi Story: Why Is FTX Going Through Such Misfortune? (A Comment on CoinDesk, Binance, Sam Bankman-Fried)

The negative ripple effect across the industry started last night with Blockfi, another crypto services firm, freezing customer withdrawals as a result of the FTX problems. After the announcement, the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply before recovering slightly and remains under the $17,000 mark.

I was shocked to see what happened this week, according to a thread posted today. I want to make sure I get it correct when I write a more complete post on the play by play.

A liquidity crunch spurred by CoinDesk’s report about the arrangement, and a statement from Binance founder Changpeng Zhao saying he planned to sell his cache of FTX’s crypto token, caused a liquidity crunch exposing a reported $8 billion hole in the beleaguered company’s balance sheet.

John J. Ray III was appointed as CEO of the FTX Group and stated that the assets can only be effectively administered through a joint process. I wanted to make sure that every employee, customer, creditor, contract party, stockholder and other stakeholder were made aware of our plan to conduct this effort with diligence and transparency.

The story was updated November 11th, 10:55AM. Added bankruptcy filing, tweets from Sam Bankman-Fried, and noted that Sir Lewis Hamilton’s F1 car will not bear FTX branding at this weekend’s upcoming race.