Talk:Timeline of FTX collapse

What the timeline is still missing addressed items

Meta:

• ✔FTX collapse topic lists posts below the description on top; see the posts in November 2022 that are mostly related to the collapse
• ✔Vox article links to most of the relevant events, and is worth going through.
• ✔Tweet with a pictorial depiction of what happened

Actual (please include multiple references to news sources discussing the tweets):

• ✔ Episode 133: The FTX catastrophe (with Byrne Hobart, Vipul Naik, Maomao Hu, Marcus Abramovich, and Ozzie Gooen)
• ✔Add "As Binance executives pored over FTX’s books, they were confronted with a confusing mess, a person familiar with the matter said. Moreover, the hole that needed to be plugged was growing: FTX first put it at $2 billion, then $5 billion, then finally more than $8 billion, the person said.

Many of FTX’s lawyers quit while the talks were under way, part of a broader exodus of employees from the company, according to people familiar with the matter." from [1]

• ✔price chart based on coin market cap
• ✔[2]
• ✔[3]
• ✔ Matt Levine is important here
• ✔ https://twitter.com/robertwiblin/status/1591099877546635269 and include https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/txGgPvKgZFpphdkHe/my-reaction-to-ftx-appalled
• ✔ https://twitter.com/moskov/status/1591592375553781760
• ✔ Sebastian: https://twitter.com/WhaleChart/status/1600584773646356487
• ✔ Caroline Ellison spotted in New York, see also coverage e.g. here
• ✔https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-11-09/bankman-fried-s-ftx-had-a-death-spiral-before-binance-deal?leadSource=uverify+wall and https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/EKN9Nn89ixriwSXpP/money-stuff-ftx-had-a-death-spiral (EA discussion)
• ✔https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50849770/is-there-a-way-to-change-your-timezone-in-chrome-devtools (use this to change timezone for FTT price chart to UTC)
• ✔https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/08/ftxs-ftt-token-plunges-80percent-wiping-out-over-2-billion-in-value.html (this was before Binance pulling out)
• ✔https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/HPdWWetJbv4z8eJEe/open-phil-is-seeking-applications-from-grantees-impacted-by
• ✔https://decrypt.co/114319/this-week-crypto-twitter-ftx-collapse-tweets
• ✔ John J. Ray testimony to Congress (December 13), transcript
• ✔ SBF arrested (you can pick many other news sources, nothing special about this one)
• ✔https://www.theblock.co/post/184619/solana-ftt-and-serum-prices-plummet-on-back-of-ftx-collapse
• ✔Archive all tweets
• ✔Sebastian: https://twitter.com/whalechart/status/1592408565402464259
• ✔ (see Impact on users event type) SoftBank writes down nearly $100 million investment in FTX and similar rows for other investors
• ✔Further elaborate November 8 Lucas Nuzzi row.
• ✔Check UTC time in row saying "SBF apologizes to investors over a lack of communication about the deal with Binance"
• ✔CoinDesk article that started everything
• ✔Binance tweet announcing plans to sell FTT (that was the imminent cause of the collapse)
• ✔Caroline Ellison (Alameda Research CEO) tweet responding to the Coindesk article
• ✔Caroline Ellison (Alameda Research CEO) offers to buy Binance's FTT
• ✔Deleted SBF tweet thread saying customer assets are fine
• ✔SBF tweet thread announcing plan to sell to Binance
• ✔Binance CEO tweet announcing plan to look into buying FTX
• ✔Binance tweet saying they've decided to not acquire FTX
• ✔FTX tweet announcing Tron credit facility
• ✔I found evidence that FTX might have provided a massive bailout for Alameda in Q2 which now came back to haunt them. by Lucas Nuzzi; this would get picked up by multiple sources, e.g., here and here
• ✔SBF "I'm sorry, I f***ed up" mea culpa tweet thread
• ✔SBF tweet thread announcing bankruptcy filing
• ✔Official FTX bankruptcy filing press release
• ✔Will MacAskill tweet thread (also posted to EA Forum here)
• ✔Elon Musk tweet -- Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter happened shortly before the FTX incident, and the whole FTX saga playing out on Twitter was used by Musk to show Twitter's importance
• ✔Administrative action against FTX Japan Co., Ltd. (covered at Japan’s financial regulator requests FTX Japan halt operations)
• ✔FTX, RIP
• ✔ My Phone Calls with Sam Bankman-Fried by Tiffany Fong; there are additional posts on that substack and more discussion around the Internet (see e.g., EA Forum post)
• ✔https://www.theblock.co/post/186132/ftx-collapse-timeline-six-days-that-rocked-the-crypto-industry
• ✔https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/11/12/the-epic-collapse-of-sam-bankman-frieds-ftx-exchange-a-crypto-markets-timeline/
• ✔https://www.protocol.com/fintech/ftx-collapse-timeline
• ✔Elon Musk tweet on SBF setting off his BS detector, and various media coverage related to this
• ✔Money, Credit, Trust, and FTX
• ✔NYT interview with SBF
• ✔SBF puts up penthouse for sale for $39.5 million
• ✔Alameda filing that shows the corporate structure, plus pictorial representations of the dependencies
• ✔FTX US President Brett Harrison steps down; the fact that this is a day before SBF's transfer of funds would be commented upon later
• ✔Who is billionaire FTX co-founder Gary Wang and why is he still committing code?
• ✔What happened at Alameda Research
• ✔Sam Harris podcast on SBF; see EA Forum post with a summary
• ✔Kelsey Piper's interview of SBF (FTX official response on Twitter, EA Forum discussion, Hacker News discussion, Business Insider coverage)
• ✔Manifold Markets prediction (note the prediction was created October 5) (Add for visual data and a row on the full timeline)
• ✔Bahamas regulator contradicts FTX claim that it was required to process local withdrawals
• ✔Bank account access after FTX hack (via Plaid)
• ✔ The Psychopharmacology Of The FTX Crash
• ✔ Doug Colkit's story of what happened
• ✔ (elaborate a bit more) Matt Yglesias's thoughts on the FTX collapse
• ✔ Bankruptcy filing by John J. Ray (new CEO of FTX) (another longer (?) version) including his condemnation of the way FTX had been run previously; see also coverage of it in the news e.g., here
• ✔Tweet thread by Adam Cochran on September 30 using data on Ethereum discrepancies at FTX to infer that FTX is highly leveraged
• ✔'Only a Psychopath Can Write That Tweet': Binance CEO CZ on SBF
• ✔Miami Heat to cut ties with bankrupt FTX, rename arena
• ✔ Add "I’m really trying to control my rage,” Kraken CEO Jesse Powell tweet.
• ✔Add row for: "On the morning of Nov. 8, Mr. Bankman-Fried sent a message to his team. He apologized for the chaos and thanked them for their efforts. It was clear the game was over,” says Nathaniel Whittemore, who was a senior marketing specialist at FTX." at [4]
• ✘The timeline of FTX's collapse in November
• ✔https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1593261525258489856
• ✔Regarding the collapse of FTX (official statement from 80,000 Hours)
• ✔Some Of Sam Bankman-Fried's Donations To Effective Altruism Nonprofits Tied To An Oxford Professor Are At Risk Of Being Clawed Back
• ✔AstralCodexTen on the FTX collapse
• ✔Trung Phan's summary is highly cited and respected
• ✔Google trends past 12 months (FTX and Alameda Research peaking on November 6)
• ✔Wikipedia Views
• ✔https://twitter.com/LucasNuzzi/status/1595080029716750340
• ✔CZ First Interview After FTX Collapse -- this is useful both as its own row, and also for information that provides CZ's perspective and background context on some of the other rows. When using information from here, make sure to say something like "CZ would later claim that ..." to make it clear that the additional context is just based on CZ's version of events. (elaborate on 3:36 week ago there was a coindesk article) also for the 24hours later contact with SBF create new row and use "The evening of Nov. 7, Mr. Zhao was in his office in Dubai editing notes for his upcoming speech at a conference of global leaders in Bali when he received a message from Mr. Bankman-Fried over Signal, an encrypted messaging app, a person familiar with the matter said. The FTX CEO congratulated his rival and described Binance as the perfect buyer for FTX, the person said." from [5]
• ✔WSJ article provides more context on what happened, including some background information that wasn't public at the time; use this to add more context/color to existing rows and possibly to add new rows as well about background events that weren't public at the time; if you hit paywall, open a brand-new incognito window and search for the article title in Google Search, then click from there
• ✔Elaborate on Tweet based on this interview : As part of Binance’s exit from FTX equity last year, Binance received roughly $2.1 billion USD equivalent in cash (BUSD and FTT). Due to recent revelations that have came to light, we have decided to liquidate any remaining FTT on our books
• ✔Cathie Wood on FTX etc.; some quotes (probably from this video, or from other places where she made similar statements) are also at https://www.businessinsider.com/cathie-wood-ftx-elon-musk-tesla-twitter-best-quotes-markets-2022-11 -- indicating that her statements and commentary on this topic are notable
• ✔ SBF Dealbook interview
• ✔New Yorker article on SBF and effective altruism
• ✔FTX Tensions Intensify as Bahamas Blasts Company’s New Chief Ray
• ✔Sebastian: https://www.reuters.com/legal/ftx-founder-bankman-fried-make-us-court-appearance-after-extradition-2022-12-22/#:~:text=NEW%20YORK%2C%20Dec%2022%20(Reuters,%22fraud%20of%20epic%20proportions.%22
• ✔CNBC article on serious incident report filed by CEA; see also EA Forum post about it
• ✔Some of the stuff referenced here
• ✔Sebastian: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/12/06/sam-bankman-fried-hires-mark-cohen-as-his-attorney-reuters/
• ✔https://puck.news/sam-bankman-fried-sbf-interview/ (see https://archive.ph/uwawF for a version that gets around the paywall)
• ✔How effective altruism let Sam Bankman-Fried happen and some EA Forum discussion of it
• ✔SBF's planned testimony that he was unable to give due to being arrested
• ✔ I Accidentally Interviewed SBF And He Hated It

EA Forum posts

• ✔the first EA post about the subject
• ✔important summary post for how things were at the time
• ✔the first public announcement by openphil, the other major founder of the EA ecosystem
• ✔ethical stands from the EA community in response what seems to be fraud by FTX
• ✔the first post on returning grants
• ✔first post with explicit suggestions for the EA community to try to reduce the risk of ftx like situation or reduce the damage caused by a situation like this
• ✔[6]
• ✔open-ended question post asking how the EA community can avoit the FTX situation
• ✔suggests very concrete actions for EA organizations, based on the late events
• ✔I can use this for the row on SBF attempting to help E Musk
• ✔[7]
• ✔author is openphil legal counsel and also her post is highly referenced and upvoted
• ✔the first post announcing a source of alternative funds for FTX Fund grantees
• ✔it questions some of the lessons the EA community is drawing from the FTX collapse
• ✔add this to the New York Times row as reference without mentioning EA in the row
• ✔highly upvoted post
• ✔highly upvoted posts suggesting higher standards for how to draw lessons
• ✔first post talking about the impact the FTX collapse had on the EA funding ecosystem
• ✔the first post talking about the EA org side of the situation and explaining the communication strategy
• ✔highly commented and by important figures
• ✔Zvi post with a very extensive and comprehensive (as of the time) coverage of the situation
• ✔The relative silence on FTX/SBF is likely the result of sound legal advice: post on EA Forum that discusses the pros and cons of talking publicly about SBF/FTX for EA; highly upvoted and generates a spirited discussion in the comments
• ✔Rethink Priorities’ Leadership Statement on the FTX situation
• ✔Thoughts on legal concerns surrounding the FTX situation: document preservation and communications (probably doesn't need a separate row, may be worth including in the row for the first post by Molly)
• ✔ Clarifications on diminishing returns and risk aversion in giving
• ✔Search for more info and new events here: https://twitter.com/AutismCapital

Suggested updates to key actors

• ✔Matt Levine (Bloomberg columnist who covered the FTX situation)
• ✔Tiffany Fong (person who did phone interviews with SBF)
• ✔Autism Capital Twitter account, maybe some other Twitter accounts?

Promotion chronology

• 2022-12-8 Crypto Mining & Investing on Facebook
• 2022-12-8 CryptoCurrency Worldwide on Facebook
• 2022-12-8 Crypto and ICO investments on Facebook
• 2022-12-8 Crypto for Beginners on Facebook