By Ben Zeisloft
When cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX suddenly imploded last week, immediately erasing the fortune of 30-year-old founder Sam Bankman-Fried, the public soon noticed multiple strings between the company and the Democratic Party that curiously run through Ukraine.
FTX, which is headquartered in the Bahamas, was launched in 2019 and had accrued more than one million users by 2022. However, users suddenly demanded $6 billion in withdrawals after an article published by CoinDesk revealed that the two arms of Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency empire, FTX and Alamada Research, had a significant overlap on their balance sheets in the form of the cryptocurrency FTT, which FTX invented. Rival firm Binance, which had been planning to purchase FTX, announced that it would discharge all holdings in the coin and eventually reversed course on the acquisition, rendering the overnight success
Bankman-Fried went from maintaining a $15.6 billion net worth to having “no material wealth” equally as fast, according to data from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The entrepreneur resigned on Friday as his company filed for bankruptcy.