Original author: aditya_baradwaj
Original translation: Block unicorn
As an engineer at Alameda Research, my entire life savings was stolen by my former boss, Sam Bankman-Fried (known to everyone as SBF). Now, a few crazy months after living through the FTX crash, Im ready to tell my story.
Let’s start from the very beginning:
I still remember the first time I met Sam - my first day in the office. I had just left my job at Google and was excited to work at this small and mysterious crypto trading company. At the time, coverage of Sam was only a small-scale news story. Alameda/FTX is not a well-known company in tech circles. In fact, I knew about the company because some of its early employees also attended Berkeley, and the news reached me through interpersonal communication.
The office itself was unremarkable, located on the fourth floor of a nondescript office building in downtown Berkeley, a place I’d often passed by when I was in college.
On the directory, the names of the 4th floor tenants appear empty, showing only that they share the building with names such as Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, which is totally inconsistent with what I expected from a multi-billion dollar cryptocurrency trading company.
When I walked into the office, SBF was sitting in the middle of the trading floor, playing League of Legends on the phone.
Yes, thats Alamedas trading floor... Even though on paper Sam has transitioned to running FTX full-time, in reality both companies are highly intertwined. Joint offices, social events and accommodation arrangements between the two companies are the norm, but we’ll leave that for another time.
Im not sure who he was talking to, but I heard snippets of their conversation from SBF:
Decentralization is the future. The most important thing you can do for yourself is to drop everything and join cryptocurrency.
This is one of the many contradictions I would see in SBF, on the one hand he will spout the virtues of decentralized, permissionless finance to anyone who will listen. But a custodial, IP-required derivatives exchange isn’t exactly a model of decentralization.
I guess everyone has two different thoughts in their hearts... maybe something else.
The meaning of this passage is that SBF is promoting the advantages of decentralized finance, but the company he founded, FTX, is a centralized exchange. This seems to be a contradiction.
Perhaps SBF believes that decentralized finance is the future, but it is not mature yet and needs centralized exchanges to help it develop. Perhaps he believes that decentralized finance and centralized finance can coexist and play a role in their respective fields.
Perhaps, SBF also has this contradiction deep inside. He wants decentralized finance to succeed, but he also knows that centralized exchanges are still indispensable for now.
That night, as we ordered Sliver Pizza and chatted, he revealed his plan to move the entire company to an island in the Caribbean. I knew nothing about the Bahamas at the time, but as I talked with SBF, it became clear to me that he had done some research.
SBF said:"Did you know that FTX’s revenue exceeds 10% of The Bahamas’ GDP?"I didn’t know it at the time, but a quick Google search revealed that he might be absolutely right.
SBF then further elaborated on FTX’s vision for being more than just a crypto exchange: He talked about setting up a vaccine factory in the Bahamas to solve the unnoticed problem caused by the slow speed of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in approving drugs. medical problems. He believes that because the drug approval process is time-consuming, many people may die because they do not have timely access to drug treatment, like an invisible grave. He discussed the strategy behind political donations made by FTX executives. He talked about possible future technologies, such as iterative embryo selection, and the importance of not letting China dominate basic biotech research. Of course, he also talked about anti-malarial bed nets and veganism.
Hearing Sams vision for the future, its clear that every move he takes - Alameda, FTX, the Bahamas, policy proposals - is part of a grand plan. He didn’t want to build a company, he wanted to build a machine—a growing sphere of influence that could transcend the confines of that small office in Berkeley and spread like a positive force across the globe. Not just a company, but a monument to effective altruism.
As a new employee with a dream, its hard not to be attracted by SBFs vision. Many of us join this company precisely because we want to do good in the world. And this billionaire, who is not yet 30 years old, is using his wealth to support an unprecedented vision for the future.
Not to mention, his self-effacing yet awkward demeanor, which I think many of us can relate to in him as our own (which can resonate with most talents).
Over the next year and a half, my life transformed in ways I never imagined.
I experienced luxury I had only seen in movies before, flying regularly between Berkeley, Hong Kong and the Bahamas. Interacted with celebrities, sports icons and politicians.
Yet at the same time, I also see irresponsible behavior. In a company that handles billions of dollars, there is risk management regardless of risk. Technical debt makes any software engineer sad, with millions of dollars in wasted spending and the arrogance of thinking it doesnt matter.
Of course, the SBF ultimately did not build vaccine factories and did not eliminate malaria. His most trusted customers, investors, and employees were all in financial trouble, and the unfinished FTX headquarters lay in ruins on the beach in Nassau.
SBF himself is currently serving time in MDC prison for violating the conditions of his house arrest. Even after everything hes been through, he still cant seem to follow the rules.
Over the past few months, Ive seen a lot of speculation online about FTX and Alameda. Unfortunately, not all of them are based in reality. What do Sam, Caroline, and the others look like in reality? Is this all just a scam? How is life in the Bahamas? People deserve to know the truth.
Unfortunately, my experience with FTX/Alameda is too complex to be recounted in one article. If you are interested in the variety of things I go through inside, please leave a reply here!
If this tweet gets enough attention, Ill turn it into a regular series. His tweets: @aditya_baradwaj
