NEW YORK (AP) — It took less than a week for FTX to go from the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world to bankruptcy court.
The embattled cryptocurrency exchange, short billions of dollars, sought bankruptcy protection after the exchange experienced the crypto equivalent of a bank run. FTX, the hedge fund Alameda Research, and dozens of other affiliated companies filed a bankruptcy petition in Delaware on Friday morning. FTX US, which originally was not expected to be included in any financial rescue, was also part of the company’s bankruptcy filing.
CEO and founder Sam Bankman-Fried has resigned, the company said. Bankman-Fried was recently estimated to be worth $23 billion and has been a prominent political donor to Democrats. His net worth has all but evaporated, according to Forbes and Bloomberg, which closely track the net worth of the world’s richest people.
“I was shocked to see things unravel the way they did earlier in the week,” Bankman-Fried wrote in a series of posts on Twitter.
FTX’s unraveling is causing ripple effects. Already companies that backed FTX are writing down their investments. Politicians and regulators are ramping up calls for stricter oversight of the crypto industry. And this latest crisis has put pressure on the prices of bitcoin and other digital currencies. The total market value of all digital currencies dropped by about $150 billion in the last week, according to CoinMarketCap.com.