According to BlockBeats, on October 7, according to The Block, FTX co-founder Gary Wang testified in the SBF trial that in November 2022, FTX's customer balances were equal to the assets held in the hot wallet, but there was an important exception: a hidden $8 billion liability called "fiat@". As customers began to withdraw assets from FTX in November 2022, SBF asked Gary Wang to calculate how much money Alameda Research needed to deposit on the exchange to cover the outflow of funds. Wang testified under direct questioning by government prosecutors on the fourth day of the SBF trial last week. He said that excluding the Alameda Research account, the sum of FTX customer balances matched the assets in the FTX hot wallet. However, he was unaware that there was a problem with his calculation. He testified that he only got the full picture when SBF asked him if he included "our Korean friends" in the calculation. Confused, Wang sought confirmation from another former FTX executive, Nishad Singh, who told Wang that the "Korean friend" was actually referring to the $8 billion "fiat@" vulnerability at the heart of the FTX debacle. The fiat@ account balance in FTX's internal database had been reallocated to an account named "seoyuncharles88@gmail.com," which was granted special privileges so that Alameda Research would not have to pay interest on the line of credit. Wang also confirmed that SBF knew that FTX's financial situation was more transparent to the public and investors, while Alameda's was not.
