In the latest installments of Sam Bankman-Fried’s (SBF) media tour, he ‘tested’ more explanations of how so much of the FTX customers’ money ended up at Alameda Research – the market-making firm owned by himself. The answers don’t hold water because there’s a question that, oddly, somebody has yet to ask.
In a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) interview, SBF said that about half of the balance owed by Alameda to FTX was from wire transfers that customers made to FTX via Alameda in the early days before FTX had a bank account. He claims some customers continued to use that route after FTX had a bank account. SBF said the figure was north of $5 billion, implying that Alameda owed FTX more than $10 billion, which WSJ previously reported.
However, when SBF put together his emergency balance sheet as FTX was imploding, the figure was $8 billion rather than $5 billion for the “poorly internally labeled fiat account”.
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