There had been two different ways that money that should have been in cold storage inside FTX instead wound up in Alameda’s hot little hands. The first was through Alameda’s normal trading activity. Like every other trader, Alameda had been allowed to borrow from the FTX exchange by posting collateral. As collateral, Alameda had used, among other things, FTT—the token that was, in effect, equity in FTX. The price of FTT had collapsed with FTX. The collateral was now worthless, and some of the loans remained unpaid. In Sam’s story, there was a reason that Alameda had been exempted from the
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