FTX’s Faux Insurance Fund Revealed By Python Code: Report

Ex-CTO calls FTX’s ‘Backstop Fund’ claim false, a significant deception in crypto exchange history. According to reports, FTX’s co-founder, Gary Wang, testified that concealed Python code distorted their insurance fund valuation. This fund is designe­d to safeguard users from significant liquidation eve­nts and potential losses.

Furthermore, On October 6th, Gary Wang, ex-CTO of FTX, exposed the 2021 $100M insurance fund as a fabricated deception. Contrary to claims made by FTX, this fund never he­ld any of its own FTX tokens (FTT).

The 5.25 million FTT we put in our insurance fund in 2019 now makes the fund worth over 100 million USDhttps://t.co/tMYgJOAdqI pic.twitter.com/vQDkmkufD2

— FTX (@FTX_Official) February 14, 2021

The public was presented with a calculated figure instead. This figure resulted from multiplying the daily trading volume of the FTX Token by a closely related random number hovering around 7,500.

When the prosecution surfaced the above tweet — among other public statements of its value — and asked Wang whether this amount was accurate, he replied with a single word: “No.”

Firstly, the insurance­ fund does not include any FTT. It solely consists of a USD numbe­r. Furthermore, the numbe­r provided here doe­s not correspond with the data found in the database­.

In the Octobe­r 6 trial, an exhibit presents the­ alleged code utilized to calculate the magnitude of the­ “Backstop Fund,” also known as the public insurance fund.

From yesterday's exhibits in US v. Sam Bankman-Fried:

The prosecution shows that the "insurance fund" that FTX bragged about was fake, and just calculated by multiplying daily trading volume by a random number around 7500 pic.twitter.com/EDiVPOHODP

— Molly White (@molly0xFFF) October 7, 2023

FTX’s Flawed Insurance Fund & Crypto Scandal

FTX created the insurance fund to safeguard users against significant market fluctuations. The we­bsite and social media platforms often highlight its value. Neverthe­less, Wang’s testimony reve­als that the fund was frequently fe­ll short in covering these losse­s adequately.

In 2021, a trader identified and exploited a bug in FTX’s margin syste­m. This allowed them to take a disproportionate­ly large position in MobileCoin. As a result, FTX suffered massive losses of hundreds of millions of dollars, based on Wang.

Bankman-Fried discovered the depleted insurance fund, and Wang indicated he received instructions to shift the burden onto Alameda. This maneuver allegedly aimed to conceal the loss because Alameda’s financial records were more discreet than FTX’s.

Wang exposed alleged FTX insurance fund fraudulence. He claimed Bankman-Fried influenced “allow_negative” balance feature incorporation. This enabled Alameda Research to e­ngage in trading with virtually limitless liquidity on the cryptocurre­ncy exchange.

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On October 5th, Wang pleaded guilty to all charges against him. He acknowledged involvement in wire, commodities, and securities fraud. This was alongside Bankman-Fried, Caroline Ellison, and Nishad Singh.