Sam Bankman-Fried, the fallen co-founder of bankrupt FTX, said Saturday he’s in the Bahamas, Reuters reported, citing a text message from him.
Bankman-Fried denied rumors that he had flown to South America.
His crypto exchanges FTX, FTX US and trading firm Alameda filed for bankruptcy on Friday. Since then, FTX was hit by a mysterious outflow of at least $662 million in tokens. The general counsel of its US arm, Ryne Miller, described it as “unauthorized transactions” on Twitter and said FTX had begun moving digital assets into cold storage — wallets that are unconnected to the internet — to mitigate damage.
Bankman-Fried didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reuters, citing anonymous sources, reported today that Bankman-Fried secretly transferred $10 billion of customer funds from FTX to his trading company Alameda Research, and that a big chunk of that has since vanished. One source it spoke to put the missing amount at about $1.7 billion, while another estimated it was between $1 billion and $2 billion.
FTX filed for bankruptcy yesterday after a barrage of customer withdrawals earlier this week, and Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO. While CoinDesk and the Wall Street Journal had reported on customer funds from FTX ending up at Alameda, the Reuters reporting on the missing funds came today.
FTX is based in Bahamas, where what one source called a “gang of kids” including Bankman-Fried ran the platform from a luxury penthouse, according to CoinDesk, with FTX and Alameda’s offices located steps apart.
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