FTX Foundation staffer fights for $275K bonus promised by SBF

November 14, 2023 Coin Telegraph

FTX Foundation staffer fights for 5K bonus promised by SBF

FTX Foundation employee Ross Rheingans-Yoo said he was not part of Sam Bankman-Fried’s “inner circle” and knew nothing about FTX’s fraud.

An employee of FTX’s charity wing recruited by FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried is trying to get paid $275,000, the remainder of his claimed 2022 salary bonus.

Ross Rheingans-Yoo's lawyers argued in a Nov. 13 court filing that only $375,000 of his $650,000 bonus was paid by FTX. They claim the remaining funds were owed when the crypto exchange filed for bankruptcy in November 2022.

Rheingans-Yoo’s latest filing comes in response to FTX’s objection filed on Oct. 30.

*Excerpt of Ross Rheingans-Yoo’s Nov. 13 response to FTX Debtor’s objection. Source: Kroll*

Rheingans-Yoo shared part of a Google Doc created by Bankman-Fried that laid out his employment terms at the FTX Foundation, which came with a $100,000 base salary. He claimed Bankman-Fried told him in memo

Rheingans-Yoo iterated he was not part of Bankman-Fried’s “inner circle” and wasn’t aware that FTX misappropriated customer funds with his lawyers adding:

“Instead, Rheingans-Yoo was a faithful employee who found himself in a mess he did not create.”

Rheingans-Yoo claims he is entitled to a further $650,000 specifically to donate to charity, a prepetition salary payment of about $5,700 and a post-petition salary of at least $62,800.

Advisers claim FTX has already fully paid Rheingans-Yoo his bonus because he elected to have the award partially repaid via options in the firm’s corporate affiliates before it filed for bankruptcy.

However, Rheingans-Yoo denies that claim.

The fate of Rheingans-Yoo’s bonus will be determined by a Delaware bankruptcy judge who is overseeing FTX’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

FTX sued Rheingans-Yoo’s Latona Biosciences Group, Bankman-Fried and several other defendants in July to return $71.6 million in investments and donations allegedly sent to various life science companies.

FTX seeks to recover through avoidance of transfers of $71.5m from

Life Sciences, Lumen Bioscience, GreenLight Biosciences Holdings, PBC, Riboscience, Genetic Networks, 4J Therapeutics, Latona Biosciences, FTX Foundation, SBF, Ross Rheingans-Yoo and Nicholas Beckstead pic.twitter.com/T7lF3sZmzN
— Sunil (FTX Creditor Champion) (@sunil_trades) July 20, 2023

The crypto exchange claims Rheingans-Yoo and Bankman-Fried personally benefited from the investments and donations but FTX and Alameda Research did not.

“Each of these transfers was made with the intent to hinder, delay, or defraud present or future creditors, a fact known by the FTX Foundation, Latona, and Bankman-Fried.”

Rheingans-Yoo claims his work at Latona, which involved analyzing potential recipients, speaking with their founders and executives and conducting due diligence, would’ve produced “positive results for society.”

Magazine: Can you trust crypto exchanges after the collapse of FTX?

Binance, Coinbase and Gemini staff are among the least happy, data suggests

July 6, 2023 Coin Telegraph

amber group

Crypto exchange Binance said its “hardcore” work culture could explain some of the results, while recruiters warn the data should be taken with a grain of salt.

Crypto exchanges, including Gemini, Binance and Coinbase, are home to some of the least happy employees in the industry, according to data derived from Glassdoor — though some argue the results may be skewed.

A quadrant chart by tech recruitment firm TrueUp — understood to have collated data from job review platform Glassdoor — mapped out how crypto firms stack up regarding employee happiness vs. growth.

27 of the most valuable cryptocurrency firms were placed on TrueUp’s quadrant chart.

*A chart depicting the happiest, least happy workers and fastest and slowest growing cryptocurrency firms. Source: TrueUp*

The chart shows defunct crypto lender Celsius, crypto exchange Gemini and crypto trading firm Amber Group, with the least happy employees, according to data gleaned from 80, 139 and 42 reviews, respectively.

Binance and Coinbase also appear on the left side of the chart, with the respective Glassdoor listings showing a total of 1,257 reviews.

Glassdoor doesn’t have a happiness metric, but it does gauge whether the reviewer would recommend the company to a friend, whether they approve of the CEO they worked under, and whether the reviewer had a positive outlook for the company.

Binance attributes score to ‘hardcore’ values

Speaking to Cointelegraph, a Binance spokesperson explained that the firm seeks to hire candidates “who can thrive in a truly high-performance environment” in addition to being “obsessively focused on delivering for our users.”

They explained that not every Binance employee is cut out to be “hardcore” — one of the firm’s core values:

“It also means that sometimes, we have some who are not able to thrive in this unique, brutally fast environment, and we have to accept some negative reviews as a result.”

“Negative feedback enables us to address problems, and we’re on a constant journey to improve our employee experience,” the Binance spokesperson added.

*Glassdoor summary of Binance. Source: Glassdoor*

Cointelegraph also reached out to Coinbase, MoonPay, Bitpanda and 21Shares for comment but did not receive a response by publication. Gemini declined to comment.

Glassdoor concerns

Glassdoor reviews are user-submitted, self-reported information. In 2017, recruiters raised concerns over the legitimacy of Glassdoor data, suggesting that reviews can be easily faked or manipulated.

However, Glassdoor states that every review goes through a “moderation process” before it is approved for publication on its website.

Neil Dundon, the founder of Crypto Recruit, told Cointelegraph that while the Glassdoor data is “speculative,” it appears as though employees “building infrastructure” are more satisfied than those working at exchanges:

“The sadder employees may not be as fulfilled given they are working in a more speculative/exchange environment whereas the right side are actually building infrastructure for blockchain, so these employees may feel they have more purpose in their work.”

The large staff layoffs among top-tier firms have likely been factored into the figures, Dundon suggested.

“Across the industry in general, though, it’s hard to feel happy in your job when there is underlying insecurity among employees with all of the layoffs that have happened over the last year,” he said.

The silver lining, according to Dundon, is that “the worst” may be behind crypto employees now.

Meanwhile, the TrueUp chart suggests the “happiest” workers in the industry came from Ava Labs, the team behind the Avalanche blockchain; cryptocurrency exchange and wallet provider Blockchain.com; and Fireblocks, an institutional digital asset custodian.

Glassdoor data also shows that Alex Mashinsky, the founder and former CEO of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius, was one of the industry’s most disliked CEOs, with only 27% of past and present Celsius employees “approving” of him.

Brian Armstrong and Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the CEOs of Coinbase and Binance, respectively, have 69% and 65% approval ratings — lower than average for technology-based CEOs.

Magazine: Can you trust crypto exchanges after the collapse of FTX?

Twitter Users Spot Crypto Scam Tweet on Verified Robinhood Account, Company Removes Post

January 25, 2023 Bitcoin.com

FTX ex-staffer: Extravagant expenditures and cult-like worshipping of SBF

December 15, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Bankman-Fried

A former FTX employee has revealed details regarding the lavish expenditures of the exchange as well as its intense company culture.

A former employee of crypto exchange FTX has seemingly exposed the company’s excessive luxury expenditures, obsessive workplace culture and grueling work hours leading to the hiring of a company psychiatrist in the year before its collapse.

Danielle Cloud, a former employee of FTX claiming to work in the marketing department, posted a series of Tweets on Dec. 13 saying FTX employed her in Oct. 2021 before she resigned roughly two weeks ago.

1. My ex - FTX

Two(ish) weeks ago, I formally resigned from my position as an FTX employee.
— Dani Cloud (@daniiicloud) December 13, 2022

“Things felt off. Cult-like,” Cloud wrote, describing the feeling when she first joined the exchange and comparing it to fraudulent ventures such as the luxury music festival Fyre Festival and health technology company Theranos.

She claimed to have “never heard of” FTX or its founder Sam Bankman-Fried but said “everyone employed at FTX was obsessed” with him.

“I supposed it made sense. The kid was young, the principles were revolutionary, the ideas were golden [...] who was I to challenge that?”

*Cloud (front row, center left) pictured with other FTX US employees in Feb. 2022. Image: FTX US President Brett Harrison's* *Twitter*

Cloud claimed the “best way” to land a role at FTX was to “be the female spouse of an existing employee” who could apparently within “a month or two” make their way into an executive position.

“Those who challenged it were churned,” she claimed.

Time off from work was also a “joke” according to Cloud. “The work week was Monday to Sunday,” she said and a coworker was “chewed out” for asking if the company had time off for Thanksgiving.

*Cloud with an unknown person at SALT’s Crypto Bahamas conference in May. The event was co-hosted by FTX. Image: Instagram*

Cloud started as a Know Your Customer (KYC) analyst at FTX US, the company’s United States arm, and was promoted to a full-time marketing role in May 2022 — a position that required her “to work out of the Bahamas majority of the time.”

FTX’s excess luxury expenditures

“The entire operation was iconically and moronically inefficient,” Cloud said regarding the exchange's headquarters in the Bahamas, “I never knew all the things money could buy.”

She claimed FTX either purchased or rented multimillion-dollar homes for its executives who threw lavish house parties and had private chefs.

11. The half dozen condos leased/purchased by FTX for free employee access... In addition to the expensed stays in luxury hotels. pic.twitter.com/RqCVfjm7eX
— Dani Cloud (@daniiicloud) December 14, 2022

Employees were provided “expensed stays in luxury hotels” in addition to access to the “half dozen condos” rented or bought by the company.

FTX’s Bahamian office had “food catered 24/7” with employee perks purported to include free groceries, a monthly pop-up barber and fortnightly massages.

*A still from a video taken by Cloud depicting an FTX work party at the Albany resort in the Bahamas. Bankman-Fried was known to reside at the location. Image: Instagram*

The Commodities Future Trading Commission (CFTC) on Dec. 13 filed a lawsuit against Bankman-Fried claiming he used FTX customer funds for luxury real estate purchases.

FTX reportedly spent over $250 million on real estate purchases buying 35 properties in the Bahamas as per a Dec. 13 report from CNBC.

Why a shrink was brought into FTX

Due to the high workload demands, Cloud said Bankman-Fried brought in a psychiatrist, Dr. George K. Lerner.

A now-deleted profile on Bankman-Fried written in September by venture firm Sequoia Capital described Lerner as “the person who knows [Bankman-Fried] the best” and “the FTX company therapist.”

Cloud said Lerner was “propositioned as a coach” there to consult on business growth and was said to be “critical” to FTX employee satisfaction and its retention strategy, but alleged Lerner asked her intimate questions about her relationship with her fiancé.

She also claimed administration staff were “pushed to illegally ship prescriptions to Nassau” which were written in California and Florida.

In a Dec. 13 congressional hearing FTX’s CEO John Ray said there was “no record keeping whatsoever” at the company, and many invoices and expense receipts were submitted through the messaging app Slack.

FTX also used the accounting software Quickbooks according to Ray who said he has “nothing against Quickbooks” but it’s not a tool “for a multi-billion-dollar company.”

Swyftx cuts 40% of staff as it braces against ‘worst-case scenario’

December 5, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Alex Harper

The Australian crypto exchange said while it had no exposure to FTX, it was "not immune" to its fallout.

Australian-based crypto exchange Swyftx has laid off a total of 90 staff members, which it said was in preparation for a “worst-case scenario” caused by the fallout of FTX and a potential fall in global trading volumes next year.

The news was shared by Swyftx co-CEO Alex Harper in a Dec. 5 statement, noting that despite not having any exposure to FTX, the company was “not immune” to the fallout over the bankrupt exchange, adding:

“As a result, we have to prepare in advance for a worst-case scenario of further significant drops in global trade volumes during H1 next year and the potential for more black swan-type events.”

A Swyftx spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the 40% staff cut was also in anticipation of a fall in trading volumes, despite these figures increasing in November.

“We have let go of staff in expectation of a potentially sharp fall in global trade volumes in the first half of 2023 and further aftershocks from FTX’s collapse," said the spokesperson.

Harper in the statement said the tough decision was necessary in order to get through the prolonged crypto winter:

“Our business is uniquely well-positioned to weather events like FTX [...] But as much as we might wish it, we do not exist in isolation from the market and that’s why we are acting fast and acting early by significantly reducing the size of our team.”

The Swyftx spokesperson reiterated that the company’s balance sheet remained intact despite it being indirectly affected by the FTX collapse, adding:

“Just for clarity, I should say we have no exposure to FTX. We hold customer funds 1:1 and don’t lend customer assets to third parties.”

Harper also revealed that his company would become more risk-averse in its business decisions and that the staff cuts would ease operational costs on its balance sheet.

“Swyftx maintains strong revenue but we’re not willing to take any risks post-FTX and are being exceptionally cautious about costs next year,” added the spokesperson, who also noted that priority areas like security, compliance and customer support services wouldn’t be affected.

As for who was laid off, a Swyftx spokesperson told Cointelegraph that the firm’s research and development team was most affected by the staff cuts.

The latest staff layoffs follow another wave of layoffs in Aug. 2022, which saw 74 employees leaving the firm, accounting for 21% of its staff at the time.

In August, Harper said the company “grew too fast” in 2021 when the market peak, but “we are simply far larger than we need to be to operate and grow.”

Digital Surge halts withdrawals

Meanwhile, another Australian-based trading platform Digital Surge, which halted withdrawals on Nov. 16, has been another company in Australia impacted by the FTX contagion.

The crypto exchange confirmed on Nov. 16 that it has suspended deposits and halted withdrawals, promising customers they’d give more details within two weeks.

However, as at the time of writing, the company has yet to provide any further information publicly.

Cointelegraph has reached out to Digital Surge for comment but has not received an immediate response.

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