FTX Fires Three Top Executives Including Co-Founder Gary Wang: Report

Cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which recently filed for US bankruptcy court protection, has fired three of its top executives, including co-founder Gary Wang, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing an FTX spokeswoman.

The other fired executives were engineering director Nishad Singh and Caroline Ellison, who ran FTX’s trading arm Alameda Research, the newspaper said.

FTX did not immediately respond to a request from Reuters for comment.

The crypto exchange filed for bankruptcy protection last week and former Wall Street trader Sam Bankman-Fried resigned as chief executive after the rival exchange Binance walked away from a proposed acquisition.

The US bankruptcy proceedings involve multiple FTX group companies with more than 1,00,000, and possibly over 1 million, creditors.

According to interviews with several people close to Bankman-Fried and company communications not previously reported, the company had been secretly taking risks with customer funds to prop up a trading firm owned by Bankman-Fried, which led to the company’s collapse.

The company had come under some regulatory oversight through the dozens of licenses it picked up via its many acquisitions. But that did not protect its customers and investors, who now face losses totaling billions of dollars.

Several crypto firms have since been bracing for the fallout from the FTX collapse, with many counting their exposure in millions to the beleaguered exchange.

© Thomson Reuters 2022