April 25, 2024

Bloomberg: FTX and Alameda Research may have a conflict of interest

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Bloomberg: FTX and Alameda Research may have a conflict of interest

Bloomberg stated that 22% The volume of all transactions on the FTX crypto exchange goes through the market maker Alameda Research, whose founder is Sam Bankman-Fried.

Bloomberg calls on regulators to addressPlease note that if legislation is not developed to provide oversight of such schemes, a conflict of interest may arise between the FTX trading platform and Alameda Research. The article notes that an unknown company in the cryptocurrency market earned more than $1 billion in 2021. This at one point raised it to the level of the largest banks and investment companies in the United States.

Citing CB Insights data, analystsBloomberg reports that Alameda Research has participated in 117 funding rounds since 2020. At the same time, Sam Bankman-Fried, who owns 50% of FTX shares and 100% of Alameda Research securities, claims that no conflict of interest will arise between the exchange and the market maker.

He explained that Alameda Research sendsorders and gets access to information about users on the same basis as other clients. In addition, according to Bankman-Fried, the company is not currently the largest market maker on FTX. However, the closed nature of the exchange's trading information makes it impossible to either confirm or refute Bloomberg's statements.  

Bloomberg analysts, not satisfiedin response to the head of FTX, they stated that in the stock markets these two areas of business activity are traditionally not related to each other. In their opinion, in the Bankman-Fried financial scheme there is no room for competition between interested parties, which means there is no opportunity to reduce the price for users.

Note that Bloomberg’s criticism is not limited to large crypto companies. Last month, the publication criticized the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for its attitude towards Bitcoin ETFs.