The scheme is simple enough: Sam contacted crypto teams and promised them a listing on FTX. Before the tokens were listed on the exchange, they were bought by Alameda, after which Bankman-Fried actively marketed the coins. Investors bought them, the price went up and Alameda ended up with a profit. This, of course, cannot be said for FTX customers. When the hype around the tokens stopped, the value of the latter fell as Alameda locked in profits.

Naturally, such actions are unethical and illegal. And now the representatives of the trading platforms will also have to answer for this.

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried before the court hearing

By the way, there will be a lot to answer for. Yesterday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission formally accused Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, of defrauding investors. According to them, Sam concealed the transfer of funds from the platform’s users to trading company Alameda Research, while simultaneously raising over $1.8 billion from investors.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s accusations from the US Securities and Exchange Commission

What FTX and Alameda were doing

This is essentially a classic scheme of so-called dumping and dumping, i.e. a special heating up of the price of a certain asset for the sake of selling it instantly, only on a huge scale. That said, the accusation of insider trading can also be drawn here, because the information about the listing was known in advance to Bankman-Fried himself, as well as to other people among the management of FTX and Alameda. Nor should it be forgotten that the two companies were practically parts of the same whole, as they constantly supported each other financially.

Sam’s touted coins in the cryptocurrency community became a meme of sorts – they became known as “samcoins”, meaning “Sam’s coins”. Long before the collapse of FTX, Bankman-Fried was little suspected of fraud, so such crypto-assets were quickly bought up, thereby giving Alameda more profit.

Sam at the Crypto Bahamas conference

The creators of the projects Sam was interested in couldn’t miss this opportunity either. A listing on FTX gave a lot more recognition in the eyes of traders, and in parallel, trading volumes and funding for startups increased significantly. According to Cointelegraph’s sources, “samcoins” included projects like Serum, Maps, Oxygen, Bonfida and Solana.

To be fair, Solana has already developed into an independent ecosystem with an abundance of developers and active users. So the version that SOL is going to die because of the current situation with Sam is probably not relevant anymore.

Incidentally, Sam is now actively tweeting and still trying to exonerate himself in the public eye. The day before, he claimed that the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, hired by the new FTX Group management as liquidators of the exchange’s bankruptcy, contradicted itself in proving the insolvency of the US arm of the trading platform.

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On 17 January, a petition was filed with the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware by FTX consultants, i.e. representatives from Sullivan and Cromwell, Alvarez & Marsal and Perella Weinberg Partners. They have once again confirmed that FTX US, represented by FTX US, is not solvent. At the same time, Sam had previously vigorously claimed otherwise – apparently to reduce the scope of liability to US authorities.

Overall, the following comment was left out of the statement.

The amount of assets revealed at the date of the bankruptcy filing is significantly lower than the aggregate balances of third-party clients as shown in the FTX US electronic ledger.

Screenshot of the company’s balance sheet from Sam

In other words, FTX US could not pay off all its debts to customers at one time. On Twitter, Bankman-Fried refuted this claim and said that the lawyers of FTX’s new management were allegedly contradicting themselves. Here is his quote.

Later in the same report, S&C reports that FTX US has another $428 million in bank accounts, in addition to $181 million in tokens. That is approximately $609 million in total assets. So FTX US had at least $111 million, and most likely about $400 million of excess cash on top of what was required to match customer balances.

Note that it is almost impossible to believe anything Sam has said anymore. Yet his actions, one way or another, have already led to the collapse of FTX and the loss of billions of dollars to users of the trading platform. And since Bachmann-Fried has not pleaded guilty and is preparing to defend himself in court, he is now unlikely to say anything other than his own excuses.

FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried

Sam’s conclusion is that FTX US could allegedly be fully solvent, so liquidators should immediately give customers access to their funds. Is this true? It is difficult to say. However, it is important to stress that Bancman-Fried personally filed for bankruptcy of his cryptocurrency corporation, which included the US version of the exchange among its components. Which means, in effect, he himself brought about the current situation.


We believe that Sam is unlikely to get out of what is happening without jail time, as he has earned too many accusations. Most importantly, Bankman-Fried's former colleagues in FTX co-founder Gary Wang and Alameda Research chief Caroline Ellison are cooperating with the authorities. We can therefore assume that Sam's tweets will not convince anyone and that he will have to answer for what he has done.