Caroline Ellison Admits She Wasn’t ‘Well Suited’ to Run Alameda Research

Former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, who in December admitted fraud related to the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, said she did not feel suited to running the failed trading desk, according to a Thursday newspaper report citing her diary. 

The ex-girlfriend of alleged fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried also reportedly wrote it “feels great” the day the FTX empire did finally collapse, the New York Times reported. 

Ellison, who was made CEO of collapsed Alameda Research by Bankman-Fried, will now be the star witness in her ex-lover’s October FTX trial. 

“Running Alameda doesn’t feel like something I’m that comparatively advantaged at or well suited to do,” she wrote, according to the NYT, which cited court documents and mentioned her “Tumblr posts about Harry Potter and Jane Austen.”

The NYT did not mention that Ellison’s controversial writing also talked about her fascination with race science and polyamory, as previously reported by Decrypt. 

It also didn’t say that despite the fact Bankman-Fried and Ellison “shared a commitment to effective altruism,” a philosophy based on being as charitable as possible, Bankman-Fried later admitted that the “ethics stuff” was “mostly a front.”

FTX was a Bahamas-based company that allowed users to buy, sell and bet on the future price of cryptocurrencies—and was one of the biggest brands in the space. 

But it suddenly went bankrupt in November of last year and the feds have since hit ex-boss and co-founder Bankman-Fried with 13 criminal charges. 

Alameda Research was its sister trading firm and it also went bust. It is a key part of FTX’s collapse because it had the ability to use FTX customer assets for its own means and without oversight, newly appointed FTX CEO John J Ray III has alleged. 

Ellison was hired by Bankman-Fried to run Alameda; the disgraced crypto mogul hired—and lived with—a number of close friends and colleagues. 

Ray, who is in charge of reorganizing FTX’s failed finances, said that the company’s collapse was caused by “a very small group of grossly inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals.