ICARUS FALLS: SBF, FTX, $FTT, WTH?
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Privacy, Technology and Perspective
Icarus Falls – WTH: An Explainer on SBF, FTX, $FTT, and What Happened with Crypto. This week, Sam Bankman-Fried (aka “SBF”), a 30-year-old multi-billionaire who had been lobbying Congress for more regulation of the cryptocurrency markets, spectacularly fell from grace as the exchange he founded, FTX and more than a hundred of its affiliates faced a liquidity crisis, culminating on Friday with a bankruptcy filing and more. FTX’s condition compounds concerns for a more wide-spread crypto contagion. How did it all happen? Let’s take a distilled look:
CoinDesk Report: On Nov. 2, CoinDesk reported an unusual overlap between the assets of FTX (SBF’s exchange) and its affiliate Alameda (SBF’s trading firm). Specifically, a review of Alameda’s balance sheet appeared to be usually weighted with $FTT tokens, which FTX issued. According to CoinDesk, Alameda had approximately $6B of its $15B of assets held in $FTT. CoinDesk also reported that Alameda’s balance sheet reflected $8 billion in liabilities, including $7.4 billion in unidentified loans. A link to the CoinDesk article follows:
CZ Starts a run on FTX: On November 6, CEO Changpeng Zhao (aka “CZ”) of Binance, FTX’s competitor and the world’s largest crypto exchange, tweeted that Binance would liquidate its $FTT holdings, stating:
As part of Binance’s exit from FTX equity last year, Binance received roughly $2.1 billion USD equivalent in cash (BUSD and FTT). Due to recent revelations that have came to light, we have decided to liquidate any remaining FTT on our books. 1/4
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance)
$FTT’s falling price causes a liquidity crisis at FTX: CZ’s announcement precipitated a steep sell-off of $FTT (and other cryptocurrencies), causing a liquidity crisis at FTX. $FTT began the week at $24/token, and as of writing, it is $1.98/token. As FTX froze customer withdraws, news spread that FTX was propping up its affiliate, Alameda, by loaning Alameda its own customer funds, using $FTT as collateral. As the price of $FTT dropped, so did FTX’s reserves. Ultimately, this liquidity crisis prompted FTX’s bankruptcy filing on Friday morning, the ejection of SBF as CEO, and the appointment of a new CEO, John Jay Ray III, who led Enron through its bankruptcy proceedings.
Friday night hack? On Friday night, CT exploded with rumors that FTX was being hacked and drained of hundreds of millions in remaining funds. FTX.US’s General Counsel tweeted:
Investigating abnormalities with wallet movements related to consolidation of ftx balances across exchanges - unclear facts as other movements not clear. Will share more info as soon as we have it. @FTX_Official
— Ryne Miller (@_Ryne_Miller)
A number of on-chain analysts (i.e. The DataFi, @TheDataFi) tweeted in real-time, tracing the movement of funds from the exchange to various digital wallets.
Later, FTX.US’s General Counsel returned to Twitter with a dubious (?) explanation of the “abnormalities with wallet movements” that he had tweeted about earlier:
Following the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings - FTX US and FTX [dot] com initiated precautionary steps to move all digital assets to cold storage. Process was expedited this evening - to mitigate damage upon observing unauthorized transactions.
— Ryne Miller (@_Ryne_Miller)
Helpful Resources: For a more detailed and entertaining review of the latest news (i.e. BlockFi has just emailed to notify its clients that their credit cards are suspended because of “recent developments…which are beyond our control”), along with a lot of gossip, we would commend the following resources, each of which is available on Twitter, YouTube, and as a podcast:
- UpOnly;
- Bankless; and
- Unchained.
CT is also full of information. Good follows include: @CoinDesk, @tier10k, @cobie, @ledgerstatus, @ErikVoorhees, @gcr, @Pentosh1, @laurashin, and many others.
Our perspective: We have several observations about what is being called “crypto’s Lehman moment”:
The news: CT is where crypto news happens and breaks. Those who were active on CT had an advantage. They were able to respond quickly to breaking news and withdraw their funds from FTX before FTX froze those funds. If you are interested in crypto, we suggest embracing CT (including its madness).
FTX’s Terms and Privacy Policy - Who has control of the KYC data?: Earlier this week, we were curious about FTX’s terms of service and privacy policy. But when we tried to access them from the United States, we were re-directed to FTX.US, a separate exchange governed under different terms. Only if U.S. individuals circumvented FTX’s technical controls could they access and use FTX.com, which is the URL of the exchange where funds were initially frozen. In fact, when we looked at FTX’s Terms of Service, we noted they specifically bar U.S. Residents from use of the FTX.com platform and trading $FTT. We understand that withdrawals on FTX.US continued to function longer than on FTX.com. However, now, FTX.US has been included in FTX’s bankruptcy filing under its proper name West Realm Shires Services Inc. We note that the entity named in FTX.US’s Privacy Policy, West Realm Shires Inc., is not included in the bankruptcy filing. We suspect (and hope) that the Privacy Policy had a typo. Otherwise, there are huge questions about whether or not FTX’s data, including sensitive KYC data, is included in the bankruptcy estate, and if it isn’t, who has control of that data.
More regulation of the crypto markets? It has been widely speculated that FTX’s collapse will prompt more regulation. We suspect that this is true, especially internationally, where many have had their funds frozen by FTX. It may also be true domestically, mainly because the extent of the damage is not yet known. At this time, it appears that the current regulations at least discouraged FTX from making itself available and otherwise offering $FTT tokens to U.S. residents. Thus, regulations already in place may have protected a number of U.S. persons had FTX.US truly operated as a separate entity (the bankruptcy filing suggests that it may not have). Still, SBF arguably made himself a target by being a prominent figure on Capitol Hill. The politicians and political appointees who’ve recently taken down photos of themselves and SBF may feel foolish and compelled to vengeance through more regulation.
The hack? An open question is whether the entire movement of funds off of FTX was truly authorized or not. Many hackers do choose Friday nights for their exploits. Further, many insiders, including employees at FTX, must be motivated, having had their life savings locked up. For this particular exploit, we suspect that it would have had to have been insider with private keys, root-level access to the online exchanges, and publisher key access to the FTX apps. Where FTX and FTX.US presumably were under separate management, it would seem that an insider with the highest level of access would be the most likely culprit. It also seems odd that the General Counsel would not have known about the movement of the funds prior to their movement… Regardless, we would recommend that FTX users delete any FTX apps from their devices in case they have been compromised. Additionally, FTX users should download their transaction histories, if they haven’t already.
Much remains to be seen. But consider that in 2014, Mt. Gox also declared bankruptcy. At the time, it was the largest crypto exchange in the world and the price of a Bitcoin was around $100 (today, the price is $17,000/$BTC). Overall, expect more news and volatility.
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Hosch & Morris, PLLC is a boutique law firm dedicated to data privacy, information security, the Internet and technology. Open the Future℠.