Here is a timeline and storyline of FTX since its founding in 2019:
• May 2019: Former Wall Street trader Sam Bankman-Fried and former Google employee Gary Wang founded FTX.
• July 2021: FTX completed a $900 million financing round with a valuation of $18 billion.
• January 2022: FTX’s U.S. branch raises $400 million from investors in its first round of funding, with a valuation of $32 billion.
• November 2, 2022: CoinDesk reports that Alameda Research relies primarily on FTX’s native token, FTT.
• November 6, 2022: Binance CEO said plans to liquidate its FTT holdings.
• November 11, 2022: FTX begins voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the United States, and Bankman-Fried resigns as CEO.
• Mid-November 2022: At least $1 billion in customer funds are reported to have disappeared from FTX, and the Bahamas securities regulator begins investigating FTX’s collapse.
• November 16, 2022: FTX outlines a “severe liquidity crisis” in U.S. bankruptcy filings, with potentially more than 1 million creditors.
This timeline outlines the rise and fall of FTX, including its rapid growth, financing success, and the chain of events that ultimately led to bankruptcy. After bankruptcy, there were also some disputes between FTX's management and regulators, such as FTX Digital Markets' refusal to recognize the validity of FTX's bankruptcy proceedings in the United States. These events together constitute the complex story of FTX's bankruptcy reorganization.
The key time points for FTX’s bankruptcy reorganization in 2023 include:
• January 3-12, 2023: Bankman-Fried is acquitted in the U.S. and is scheduled for trial in October by Judge Lewis Kaplan. In a blog post, Bankman-Fried denies stealing funds and blames FTX’s collapse on a broader drop in the cryptocurrency market.
• February 28, 2023: Nishad Singh, former FTX engineering director, becomes the third member of the team to plead guilty to fraud charges and agrees to cooperate with prosecutors.
• August 11, 2023: A judge revoked Bankman-Fried’s bail for at least two instances of witness tampering, including sharing Ellison’s private writings with a New York Times reporter, and he is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn awaiting trial.
• October 3, 2023: Bankman-Fried’s trial begins in Manhattan federal court.
• October 28, 2023: Bankman-Fried testifies in his own defense, insisting he didn’t defraud anyone or steal billions from clients.
• November 2, 2023: Bankman-Fried is found guilty of all seven charges he faced.
The information provides an updated timeline of FTX’s bankruptcy and Sam Bankman-Fried’s legal issues, showing how the FTX storyline could develop into 2023.