TX moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to The Bahamas last year, with former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried hailing it as “one of the few places to set up a comprehensive framework for crypto” at the time.
On Sunday, the authorities in The Bahamas said they were investigating potential criminal misconduct surrounding the company’s implosion.
“In light of the collapse of FTX globally and the provisional liquidation of FTX Digital Markets Ltd., a team of financial investigators from the Financial Crimes Investigation Branch are working closely with the Bahamas Securities Commission to investigate if any criminal misconduct occurred,” the Royal Bahamas Police Force said in a statement.
It’s not clear which particular aspect of the swift collapse of FTX authorities are investigating.
Bankman-Fried, the 30-year-old founder of the exchange, was one of the faces of the crypto industry, amassing a fortune once totaling $25 billion that has since vanished. He had been viewed as the crypto world’s white knight, stepping in previously to rescue companies struggling after the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin in May.
FTX, backed by elite investors like BlackRock and Sequoia Capital, rapidly became one of the biggest crypto exchanges in the world. Its collapse was preceded by the decision to lend billions of dollars’ worth of customer assets to fund risky bets by Alameda, Bankman-Fried’s crypto hedge fund, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
https://ftxcollapse.org/