FTX used Python code to fake its insurance fund figure: Gary Wang
Crypto exchange FTX used hidden Python code to misrepresent the value of its insurance fund — a pool of funds meant to prevent user losses during huge liquidation events — according to testimony from FTX co-founder Gary Wang.
In a damning new testimony on Oct. 6, FTX's former chief technology officer, Gary Wang, said that FTX’s so-called $100 million insurance fund in 2021 was actually fabricated, and also never actually contained any of the exchanges’ FTX tokens (FTT) as claimed.
Instead, the figure shown to the public was calculated by multiplying the daily trading volume of the FTX Token by a random number close to 7,500.
The 5.25 million FTT we put in our insurance fund in 2019 now makes the fund worth over 100 million USDhttps://t.co/tMYgJOAdqI pic.twitter.com/vQDkmkufD2
When the prosecution surfaced the above tweet — among other public statements of its value — and asked Wang whether this amount was accurate he replied with a single word: “No.”
An exhibit in the Oct. 6 trial shows the alleged code used to generate the size of the so-called "Backstop Fund” or public insurance fund.
From yesterday's exhibits in US v. Sam Bankman-Fried:
The prosecution shows that the "insurance fund" that FTX bragged about was fake, and just calculated by multiplying daily trading volume by a random number around 7500 pic.twitter.com/EDiVPOHODP
FTX's insurance fund was designed to protect user losses in case of huge, sudden market movements and its value was often touted on its website and social media.
According to Wang’s testimony, however, the amount contained within the fund was often insufficient to cover these losses.
For example, in 2021, a trader was able to exploit a bug in FTX's margin system to take an outsized position in
Read more on cointelegraph.com
