Alameda Research was allowed to exceed normal borrowing limits on the FTX exchange since its early days, Sam Bankman-Fried has said, in a concession that illustrates how the former billionaire’s trading shop enjoyed preferential treatment over clients years before the 2022 crypto crisis.
In an interview with the Financial Times, the 30-year-old described the outsized role Alameda played in launching the exchange in 2019 and how it had access to exceptionally high levels of borrowing from FTX from the beginning.
Bankman-Fried said that “when FTX was first started” Alameda “had fairly large limits” on its borrowing from the exchange but he “absolutely” wished he had subjected the trading firm to the same standards as other clients.