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"their systems became unprofitable" - "Alameda & FTX jointly continued to lose large amounts of money" - "uncompetitive market-making strategies, risky lending practices" - "erratic behavior and unprofitable gambling".

> losing all the money accidentally rather than malice (far more likely)

They sound an awful lot like trading / accidental losses than malice to me.




Alameda was a hedge fund. It could lose all of its money and it would be totally fine.

The moment they touched customer funds it became fraud and theft.

This was not accidental. Losing it in trading might have been, but it was trading with stolen funds.


I agree with that. I don't think this was malice though - just extreme stupidity (and hopefully criminal). I think they thought they could trade their way out of it.

That's different to malice which goes to motivations.


Alameda just non-maliciously gave their own account special privileges on their own exchange, non-maliciously front-ran customer orders, non-maliciously traded on material nonpublic information (their own exchange listings), non-maliciously used their ownership of their exchange to strike trades that caused them $400mm of losses in one of their multiple KCG-style algorithmic meltdowns, non-maliciously stole billions of dollars from their exchange's customers, non-maliciously lied about Bahamas residents being senior to all other creditors so they could withdraw hundreds of millions of dollars again, non-maliciously "hacked" their exchange wallets to steal additional hundreds of millions of dollars from their creditors, and non-maliciously prematurely unlocked hundreds of millions of dollars of FTT and sent it to binance to dump.


All with the best of intentions.

For the greater good of humanity. The most effective altruism.


Normally if your fund is out of money and your exchange is fine you could spin down the fund rather than stealing customer money from the exchange


Normally you dont have a fund and an exchange sharing capital


Yes to be clear I agree. I'm saying the article doesn't claim malice.




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