Understanding the Collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s Crypto Empire

The collapse of the Sam Bankman-Fried empire is gigantic, sprawling and fast moving. While details are still coming out, it already ranks among the most prominent corporate disasters of all time and has left the entire crypto community reeling. To better understand the role that FTX played in the industry and how the exchange started to unravel, we speak with two guests on this episode. First, we have Evgeny Gaevoy, the founder and CEO of the crypto market-making firm Wintermute, to explain how he used the FTX platform and how he understood its relationship with SBF's trading firm, Alameda Research. Then we speak with independent researcher James Block, author of the Dirty Bubble Media newsletter, and one of the first observers to blow the whistle on the FTX disaster.

Stay tuned. On Friday, we'll have a special follow-up interview with Bloomberg Opinion's Matt Levine, who also appeared with Sam Bankman-Fried on the now-infamous “yield farming” episode of Odd Lots in April 2022.

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