In just one week, FTX, once the world's second largest exchange, collapsed. And bigger dramas followed one after another, and FTX, which already had little assets, was hacked bizarrely, and hundreds of millions of dollars were stolen.
According to Arkham Intelligence data, as of now, the FTX attack hacker-related wallets still hold $292 million worth of ETH on Ethereum, $48 million worth of DAI, $44 million worth of BNB, and $4 million worth of Tether’s USDT on Avalanche and the $3.8 million MATIC on the Polygon Matic Bridge.
Starting from the morning of November 12, the user's deposit value, deposit and withdrawal records, and transaction records have all disappeared. For users who stayed on FTX, the last glimmer of hope was almost shattered. On November 15th, FTX users found that the login operation would return "503", and FTX could no longer log in.
The hacker appeared at the right time, which also made the market think more about the direction of the plot.
Autism Capital, a Twitter user who has been tracking this incident, gave a more sensational conjecture: the hacker was nothing, and the insiders absconded with money. Autism Capital found that the hacker's operation records did not match the time node when FTX disclosed the information, and the hacker's operating authority was extremely high. Some people think that this is not like outsiders can reach.
Some community users found，FTX's co-founder and CTO Gary Wang's Github account continued to contribute code until the company's bankruptcy.This active "work" scenario also raises doubts.
On November 11, Gary Wang submitted code 5 times. On November 10, Gary Wang made 19 commits. After that, the Gary Wang account has not had any code submission activity. However, since the code was submitted to a private project, we cannot see the specific content of the submission, but it is speculated that the updated code may be the code of FTX.
Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison has stated that she, SBF, Gary Wang, and another executive were aware of FTX's remittance of user deposits to Alameda.
The chain reaction caused by the collapse of FTX is gradually emerging and continues to expand. Hundreds of companies have been implicated, and the entire encrypted finance has been hit hard. (recommended reading"Special Issue | FTX's liquidity is exhausted, and the Lehman moment in the encryption industry is coming (continuously updated)"）
After the FTX hacking incident, Gary Wang lurking under the water has attracted much attention. As a core member of FTX & Alameda and a world-class rich man on the Forbes rich list, this mysterious figure has no digital identity, no resume, and no photo.By The Blocksecondary title
Who is Gary Wang?
At least $1 billion in client funds disappeared from FTX, according to people familiar with the matter.
On the afternoon of the 12th, the Reuters report also revealed more doubts. An investigation by FTX's legal and financial team found that SBF implemented what it called a "back door" into FTX's accounting system, which was built using custom software. This "back door" allowed SBF to perform work that could alter the company's financial situation without alerting others, including outside accountants. It was through this setup that SBF transferred $10 billion to Alameda without any risk warning.
Such a high-authority backdoor is naturally far from being done by ordinary employees. The media and investors put their attention on Gary Wang.
On the FTX official website, only SBF and Gary Wang have the title of "Founder".image description
(Gary Wang ranks 227th on the Forbes Rich List)
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(The picture is from the FTX official website, which has now been deleted)
Four former colleagues of Gary Wang, who did not want to be named, said that Gary Wang was a man of few words and obsessed with programming.
“Gary has always been very distant from an employee standpoint, he’s not usually in the office,” said a source familiar with Alameda and FTX’s operations. “He likes to work from home, he’s pretty much the only one who can People. Everyone else always had to stay in the office, Gary was always the exception.”
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FTX is known for the lean operation of its engineering team, and the exchange was initially built by just two developers. In an interview with Insider, SBF stated that even by the end of 2021, the exchange and all of its subsidiaries will only be operating with 10 to 25 developers. In comparison, Binance’s open hiring alone includes 185 engineers, while OKX is hiring 43 engineers.
"We only have five engineers," said a source familiar with Alameda, who also speculated on the approach,"In retrospect, it seems like it was because these guys pretty much had root access, and they didn't want other people to see it."
According to SBF, he is not good at programming himself, so he needs a small engineering team to help him build FTX. In an interview, he once admitted, "Most people think that I am a good programmer. But no, I did not write any code for FTX. FTX has many other people."
A recent Reuters report indicated that SBF had a backdoor in FTX. But an investor in FTX offered to add, "If there is a back door to the infrastructure, it's hard to imagine Gary not knowing about it." Another source familiar with FTX and Alameda echoed, saying that Gary Wang is one of the few people who has root access to the code base.
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Mystery man
One insider said that while he had met Wang, they had never spoken, and "he rarely spoke to people." Difficult to contact."
Gary doesn't talk much and doesn't need much, but he has a very close relationship with SBF, according to a former FTX and Alameda employee. SBF is the person Gary talks to the most. Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison was one of the only people who was able to get a quick response from Gary. "It's not clear how he got involved, but he's definitely considered a close circle member," says one former employee.
Gary Wang lives in a luxury penthouse in the upmarket Albany neighborhood of the Bahamas, along with SBF, Caroline Ellison and several others.
Short seller Marc Cohodes has been warning investors about FTX since May. He had said in a statement that Gary could not be trusted.
“Gary Wang has no digital identity of any kind, he has no searchable email, phone number, or spoken to anyone I could find. This behavior raises more questions than answers, and none of the $11 billion That's how people hide themselves."
(Benjamin Robertson and Frank Chaparro contributed to this article.)
