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Notes -
From the CFTC filing:
I think the crypto product must have been FTT their own "in-house digital token" which Alameda used and relied on heavily, so when it went "kaboom" that started the dominoes falling.
Interestingly, one of the SDNY charges was "Conspiracy to Defraud the United States and Violate the Campaign Finance Laws" because they were backing candidates and getting involved in party donations, all in the cause of getting crypto regulated and putting FTX into a favourable position under the new regime.
That is the impression I got both from the Michael Lewis book and reading the initial trial depositions: the boring men in grey suits with all the red tape rules around fiscal responsibility were dumb and stupid and we were so smart and so cutting-edge and knew better. The original sin of EA, in fact: we can do better than how it's always been done because we have such big IQs.
The jumping around between Alameda etc. was "well it's all one big pot of money we're handling, so long as we're making massive returns does it really matter if we take some from pot A and put it into pot B and then draw it out for pot C?" liberally seasoned with "anyway, this is only dumb red tape, we're tryna save the world here!!!"
John J. Ray III's testimony in the Chapter 11 declaration in Delaware gives a good sample of the exasperated reaction of old-school business types to the shenanigans (and his televised appearances to committees etc. were very funny):
My own personal take is that part of SBF's problem was he wanted to buy Mommy's love by making tons of money and donating it to all her pet progressive causes, and get a big name for himself so he could live up to the "son of two Stanford law professors" family mantle, where he was smart but one amongst a lot of smart, mathy, geeky kids so he didn't particularly stand out, especially in the milieu of "His parents raised him and his siblings utilitarian—in the same way one might be brought up Unitarian—amid dinner-table debates about the greatest good for the greatest number". I got the impression that he was regarded with some indulgence by his parents, especially Mom, as "well bless him, he tries, not quite the top drawer academically though" in their circle of liberal academics who liked to talk about how to put the world to rights.
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