and it's time for good to know. Your daily
dose of knowledge nuggets about today's top stories. The
headliner for today's crypto hearing on Capitol Hill didn't make
it to Washington after being arrested in the Bahamas late
last night lisa Benetton is here to unravel everything you
need to know about the F. T. X
. Fallout lisa. Hi Hannah. Well, we've
been following this one closely here at cheddar. But
if you miss today's testimony, don't worry. Here
are the highlights. Civil and criminal charges have been
quickly mounting against Sam bank man freed. Founder of
the now collapsed Cryptocurrency Exchange, F. T.
X. That has lost at least$1 billion and
customer funds. And Bateman freed was expected to testify
during the House Committee on Financial Services hearing about the
company's collapse. But after he was arrested, the
hearing moved forward without him with the current ceo john
J ray in the hot seat. And here's how
Ray summed up FT. X's fatal flaw. Today
. The F. D. X. Group's collapse
appears to stem from absolute concentration of control in the
hands of a small group of grossly inexperienced and unsophisticated
individuals who failed to implement virtually any of the systems
or controlled that are necessary for a company entrusted with
other people's money or assets. And the new ceo
has said that F. T. X. Was
even worse than Enron. I'll let him explain the
the f. D. X. Group is unusual
in the sense that, you know, I've done
probably a dozen large scale bankruptcies over my career,
including in run of course ah every one of those
entities had some financial problem or another. Uh They
have some characteristics that are in common. Uh This
one is unusual and it's unusual in the sense that
literally, you know, there's no record keeping whatsoever
F. T. X. Worse than Enron that
says something lisa and we know this morning came with
a fresh filing of civil charges from the sec.
Tell us more about that. Well, it's not
looking good to say the least. The sec claims
since at least May of 2019 FT X. Raised
more than$1.8 billion from investors while portraying the company
as a safe responsible crypto trading platform with sophisticated automated
risk measures to protect customers assets. But in reality
bank, Manfred spent years diverting FT. X.
Customers money to his own privately held crypto hedge fund
. The sec chair, Gary Gensler put it this
way, Sam Blankman freed. Built a house of
cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors that
it was one of the safest buildings in crypto.
And with the investigation's still ongoing, this will surely
not be the last we're learning about bank man freed
and the downfall of F. T. X.
Quite the analogy from the sec chair at least a
Benetton live in D. C. Thank you so
much lisa