FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried appeared at a Senate committee hearing earlier this year on cryptocurrencies.
Photo:
Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg News
Alameda Research’s chief executive and senior FTX officials knew that FTX had lent its customers’ money to Alameda to help it meet its liabilities, according to people familiar with the matter.
Alameda’s troubles helped lead to the bankruptcy of FTX, the crypto exchange founded by
Sam Bankman-Fried.
Alameda is a trading firm also founded and owned by Mr. Bankman-Fried.
In a video meeting with Alameda employees late Wednesday Hong Kong time, Alameda CEO
Caroline Ellison
said that she, Mr. Bankman-Fried and two other FTX executives,
Nishad Singh
and
Gary Wang,
were aware of the decision to send customer funds to Alameda, according to people familiar with the video. Mr. Singh was FTX’s director of engineering and a former Facebook employee. Mr. Wang, who previously worked at Google, was the chief technology officer of FTX and co-founded the exchange with Mr. Bankman-Fried.
Alameda faced a barrage of demands from lenders after crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital collapsed in June, creating losses for crypto brokers such as
Voyager Digital Ltd.
, the people said.
Ms. Ellison said on the call that FTX used customer money to help Alameda meet its liabilities, the people said.
On Friday, FTX, Alameda, FTX US and other FTX affiliates filed for bankruptcy protection.
Bankruptcy means that it could be a long time before individual investors and others owed their funds are able to potentially recover any of them, if ever.
Ms. Ellison didn’t return a phone message and an email seeking comment. Messrs. Singh and Wang didn’t respond to multiple messages seeking comment. Ryne Miller, FTX US’s chief legal officer, declined to comment.
Write to Dave Michaels at dave.michaels@wsj.com, Elaine Yu at elaine.yu@wsj.com and Caitlin Ostroff at caitlin.ostroff@wsj.com
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