FTX and the Serengeti of bankruptcy

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For the last year and a half, the story of FTX has focused largely on the crimes and punishment of Sam Bankman-Fried. But in the background, the actual customers he left behind have been caught in a financial feeding frenzy over the remains of the company.

On today's show, we do a deep dive into the anatomy of the FTX bankruptcy. We meet the vulture investors who make markets out of risky debt, and hear how customers fare in the secretive world of bankruptcy claims trading.

This episode was hosted by Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi and Amanda Aronczyk. It was produced by James Sneed and Sam Yellowhorse Kesler. It was edited by Jess Jiang, and fact-checked by Sierra Jaurez. It was engineered by TK. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.

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Transcript

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0:31.3	This is Planet money from NPR.
0:36.0	These days, when most people hear about the
0:38.0	cryptocurrency exchange FTX, they think of one of the great financial
0:42.4	meltdowns of the 21st century.
0:45.0	But there is this huge other part of the story about the obscure corner of the financial world that feeds off of disasters like this.
0:53.0	To tell that story, we're going to start with someone named
0:56.0	Begumshi Kanagundla.
0:58.0	In early 2022, he had just opened up an account with FTX.
1:01.0	The platform was legit.
1:03.4	It was really easy to follow, really easy to do stuff.
1:06.7	Your transaction fee was very low.
1:09.4	I mean, it was great.
1:10.6	But Gumshe had found out about the platform the way a lot of people did through a Super Bowl ad starring comedian Larry David
1:17.0	It's FTX it's a safe and easy way to get into crypto.
1:20.0	Eh, I don't think so.
1:22.0	And I'm never wrong about this stuff. I was like oh man Larry
	...

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