The drive for leadership from FTX and Alameda Research is starting to take shape. Sam Bankman-Fried had already flown to the United States to appear in court. Now the US Attorney General has announced that Caroline Ellison (Alameda Research) and Gary Wang (founder of FTX) have pleaded guilty.
Ellison and Wang work together
In short, Ellison and Wang are working with authorities to collect additional evidence against Bankman-Fried. That doesn’t mean they get away with it, but they can look forward to a reduced sentence. The New York Times called Ellison and Wang’s guilty plea a “massive step forward” for federal prosecutors against Bankman-Fried.
He is now in pretrial detention awaiting the start of his own trial in New York’s southern circuit. It’s impressive that Ellison and Wang chose to team up to sue Bankman-Fried since the three of them lived together in a luxury penthouse in the Bahamas.
If you believe the words of the New York Times, there was even talk of a “romantic” relationship between Bankman-Fried and Ellison. Little of that will now be left, as Ellison is now seeking to have his own sentence reduced at Bankman-Fried’s expense.
he was not alone
The indictments released Wednesday show prosecutors and lawmakers believe Bankman-Fried alone could not keep the operation going. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ellison misused funds from customers of FTX users for Alameda Research’s business. Wang designed the software to make this as invisible as possible.
“Ellison and Wang were active participants in the spectacle that misled FTX customers,” the SEC said in a statement. The collapse of FTX was a huge blow to the entire crypto industry.
FTX is seen by many as an example of how an exchange platform should behave. Hardly anyone saw that there was so much chaos behind the scenes on the Bankman Fried exchange platform. “The promissory notes from Ellison and Wang could force other former executives to also cooperate with authorities,” continues the New York Times.
a piece of history
Caroline Ellison met Bankman-Fried at the American trading company Jane Street. Both worked there after graduating from Stanford University. In 2017, Bankman-Fried decided to close Jane Street to establish Alameda Research. Ellison joined him in 2018 and quickly became a big name for the company.
Finally, in 2019, Ellison took over as CEO of Bankman-Fried when he and Gary Wang decided to create FTX. In the end, things went quickly with the exchange platform. It reached the top of the market in no time, only to implode after more than three years.
Looking back, all three will deeply regret their decisions over the past three years. Ellison, Wang and also Bankman-Fried are fundamentally extraordinarily talented people, but little of that remains now. However, the treatment of the three is not entirely unfair as they have stolen and embezzled billions of dollars in savings.
Source: Btc Direct
Source link
Roy Brown is a renowned economist and author at The Nation View. He has a deep understanding of the global economy and its intricacies. He writes about a wide range of economic topics, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, international trade, and labor markets.
