Sam Bankman-Fried Wanted to Close Alameda in 2022, Unpublished Posts Show

Concerns around the actual relationship between Sam Bankman-Fried’s two companies, trading firm Alameda Research and crypto exchange FTX, led the founder to consider shutting Alameda in 2022, a series of unpublished posts revealed in the ongoing court trial show.

“For the past few years, the FUD around Alameda’s relationship with FTX has been too much of a burden to justify its existence,” a post from an unpublished series revealed in the trial show. “This FUD has been largely spread by competitors of FTX, looking to distract from their problems,” Bankman-Fried blamed.

He hoped to continue Alameda as an investment firm and infrastructure developer, but claimed in the posts that Alameda won’t actively trade.

“Going forward, Alameda will continue to not do nefarious trading activity on FTX, because it won’t do any trades on FTX. Or anywhere else,” he wrote at the time.

Bankman-Fried’s Alameda was once one of the most influential trading companies that provided billions of dollars in liquidity and investments to tokens and crypto firms. But it drew widespread rumors (which are now allegedly true) that it traded against FTX clients and had unfair advantages.

The house of cards finally fell after CoinDesk broke news about FTT, FTX’s own tokens, making up the majority of Alameda’s balance sheet. This meant investments were valued at more than their actual worth and that any borrowed money was effectively a bad loan.

Alameda co-founder Caroline Ellison has since testified that the business knowingly manipulated its balance sheet to look “less risky to investors” and that billions of dollars in FTX customer funds were borrowed by Alameda on Bankman-Fried’s instructions.