Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon

One of the only FTX employees who remained in the Bahamas was Constance Wang, the COO of FTX and the CEO of FTX Digital Markets. She remained partly because she was unable to transport both her cats home to China. Her friend and subordinate Quinn Li stayed to help her. Constance was also motivated by a desire to find out what had happened to FTX.

Constance obtained and reviewed a stack of company documents. One of the documents revealed that over $10 billion of customer funds had been misappropriated—the money had been moved into Sam’s personal trading fund.

Lewis describes how FTX had risked traders’ money. FTX had loaned Alameda all its customer deposits for free. It had also excused Alameda from following the same risk rules it imposed on all other traders on its platform. While trades that went into the red were normally liquidated, Alameda was given special treatment and allowed to hold onto losing positions indefinitely.

Constance also reviewed a document that showed the top shareholders of FTX. Even though she had been one of FTX’s earliest employees and had served as an executive of the company, she only owned 0.04% of the company, less than virtually all other employees at her level.