A cryptocurrency exchange, or a digital currency exchange (DCE), is a business that allows customers to trade cryptocurrencies or digital currencies for other assets, such as conventional fiat money or other digital currencies. Exchanges may accept credit card payments, wire transfers or other forms of payment in exchange for digital currencies or cryptocurrencies. A cryptocurrency exchange can be a market maker that typically takes the bid–ask spreads as a transaction commission for its service or, as a matching platform, simply charges fees.
Michael Monroe Lewis is an American author and financial journalist. He has also been a contributing editor to Vanity Fair since 2009, writing mostly on business, finance, and economics. He is known for his nonfiction work, particularly his coverage of financial crises and behavioral finance.
Fenwick & West LLP is a law firm of more than 470 attorneys with offices in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, Santa Monica, Washington, DC and Shanghai. The firm focuses on the technology and life sciences sectors, advising clients at all stages from startups to public companies. Fenwick has been embroiled in legal issues with the US law enforcement and multiple class action lawsuits due to their representation of FTX, for whom they allegedly created shell companies in order to launder money and skirt regulatory scrutiny.
CoinDesk is a news site specializing in bitcoin and digital currencies. Founded by Shakil Khan, the firm also provides guides to bitcoin for those new to digital currencies.
Barbara Helen Fried is an American lawyer and professor emeritus at Stanford Law School. She is also the mother of Sam Bankman-Fried, who is an MIT graduate, entrepreneur, and convicted felon.
Alan Joseph Bankman is an American lawyer, Ralph M. Parsons Professor of Law and Business at Stanford Law School, and psychologist. He was also employed at FTX, the cryptocurrency company founded by his son, Sam Bankman-Fried, who is an MIT graduate, entrepreneur, and convicted felon. His tenure at FTX lasted until the company's bankruptcy and subsequent collapse in 2022.
Samuel Benjamin Bankman-Fried, or SBF, is an American entrepreneur who was convicted of fraud and related crimes in November 2023. Bankman-Fried founded the FTX cryptocurrency exchange and was celebrated as a "poster boy" for crypto. At the peak of his success, he was ranked the 41st-richest American in the Forbes 400.
FTX Trading Ltd., commonly known as FTX, is a bankrupt company that formerly operated a fraud-ridden cryptocurrency exchange and crypto hedge fund. The exchange was founded in 2019 by Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang. At its peak in July 2021, the company had over one million users and was the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume. FTX is incorporated in Antigua and Barbuda and headquartered in the Bahamas. FTX is closely associated with FTX.US, a separate exchange available to US residents.
Alameda Research was a cryptocurrency trading firm, co-founded in September 2017 by Sam Bankman-Fried and Tara Mac Aulay.
BlockFi was a digital asset lender founded by Zac Prince and Flori Marquez in 2017. It was based in Jersey City, New Jersey. It was once valued at $3 billion.
Caroline Ellison is an American former business executive and quantitative trader who served as the CEO of Alameda Research, the trading firm affiliated with the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and founded by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. In 2022, she pleaded guilty to fraud, money laundering, and conspiracy charges related to her role at Alameda Research.
Mark P. Wetjen is an American lawyer. In 2011, he was nominated by Barack Obama to serve a five-year term as a Commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). He also served for five months as acting chairman of the CFTC upon the departure of his predecessor, Gary Gensler.
The Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act (DCCPA) is a proposed United States federal law to regulate the trading of cryptocurrencies and related digital assets. It would place the regulation of crypto assets under the authority of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which already regulates the trading of financial derivatives in the United States.
The bankruptcy of FTX, a Bahamas-based cryptocurrency exchange, began in November 2022. The collapse of FTX, caused by a spike in customer withdrawals that exposed an $8 billion hole in FTX’s accounts, served as the impetus for its bankruptcy. Prior to its collapse, FTX was the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume and had over one million users.
Gary Wang is an American businessman who pleaded guilty for his former role as an executive at cryptocurrency firm FTX. Before co-founding FTX with Sam Bankman-Fried, he worked at Google Flights, building systems for aggregating prices over millions of flights. Prior to FTX's collapse, he was ranked the 227th richest American in the Forbes 400, and the 431st richest person in the world by The World's Billionaires.
Stephen Findeisen, better known as Coffeezilla, is an American YouTuber and crypto journalist who is known primarily for his channel in which he investigates and discusses online scams, usually surrounding cryptocurrency, decentralized finance and internet celebrities. Before Coffeezilla, Findeisen was active on YouTube with the channel Coffee Break between 2017 and 2020.
Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon is a 2023 book by Michael Lewis about Sam Bankman-Fried, a fraudster who founded the failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX. The book's publication date, October 3, 2023, coincided with the beginning of Bankman-Fried's trial on seven counts of fraud and money laundering. On November 2, 2023, in the case of United States v. Bankman-Fried, Bankman-Fried was convicted of all seven counts of fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering.
United States of America v. Samuel Bankman-Fried was a 2023 federal criminal trial in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Financial entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried, commonly known as SBF, was convicted on seven charges of fraud and conspiracy following the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange FTX in November 2022.
Storybook Brawl was an auto battler video game developed by Good Luck Games. It was best known for being acquired by cryptocurrency exchange FTX to develop non-fungible token integrations, a move that faced player backlash.
Zeke Faux is an American journalist and author. He is an investigative reporter for Bloomberg News. He is currently a national fellow at New America.
