FTX's defining moves.
The defining strategic moves at FTX — each one explained and grounded in the record.
The Fall · Decision Forks
FTX Didn't Collapse in Nine Days. It Was a Three-Year Theft That Took Nine Days to Show.
FTX is remembered as the fastest collapse in finance: nine days from a single article to bankruptcy. The speed is the lie. The fraud started in 2019, and by the end FTX held 0.1% of the bitcoin customers thought they had.
8 min
The Founder Doctrine · Founder Doctrine
FTX Didn't Lose the Customer Money by Accident. The Code Was Written to Take It.
The 'math nerd in over his head' story is a defense, not a fact. SBF controlled the exchange, the trading firm, and a single flag in the code that gave that firm limitless secret credit. The $8 billion shortfall wasn't a glitch — it was the design.
8 min
The Founder Doctrine · Founder Doctrine
FTX Didn't Lack Risk Controls. One Man Owned the Off Switch.
FTX is told as a story about crypto's wildness. It's really a story about who held the keys: SBF owned ~90% of Alameda and a majority of FTX, and in July 2019 a single line of code—'Allow Negative'—let his own fund break the rules everyone else obeyed.
8 min
The Counterfactual · Decision Forks
FTX Didn't Outsmart Its Investors. They Forgot to Ask for the Audit.
The story is that FTX ran a fraud so clever it fooled Sequoia, Temasek, and BlackRock. The real story is duller and worse: the venture funds skipped the audited financials, accepted numbers made up by the company they were funding, and called it diligence.
8 min