Who is Caroline Eddison, the woman behind the FTX crash

Sam Bankman-Fried is said to have routed FTX client funds to Alameda Research. US securities regulators are now investigating.
carolinecapital

Caroline Ellison was the CEO of the trading firm Alameda Research, founded by FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried in 2018.

Ellison is said to have lived with ten people from the FTX and Alameda teams in a house in the Bahamas in an “imperial harem” and is said to have been in a relationship with Bankman-Fried.

Since the collapse of the crypto exchange FTX, Ellison has been the focus of investigative investigations and deleted her online profile.

With the rapid collapse of crypto exchange FTX, many secrets about its founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and his crypto empire are coming to light. Bankman-Fried is said to have forwarded FTX client funds to the trading firm Alameda Research, which he founded in 2018. At the heart of the unfolding financial scandal is Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison, who enabled FTX’s sham success and helped cause its spectacular crash.

Ellison, who has maintained online accounts on Linkedin, Twitter and Tumblr, has been trying to take her dates offline since the revelations about Sam Bankman-Fried. Ellison deleted her Linkedin account, online photos and all contact information. Journalists try to collect information about the shadowy figure of the financial scandal.

The CEO of Alameda Research is said to have been extremely smart and highly educated, a math genius, a bookworm and a Harry Potter fan who philosophizes on Tumblr about gender roles, culture and society, according to her lecturers. Here’s what we know from Ellison’s Tumblr profile and interviews over the years.

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What we know about Caroline Ellison

Born in 1994, Caroline Ellison grew up in the Boston suburbs. Both her father and mother are academics. Ellison’s mother is an associate professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and her father, Glenn Ellison, is the head of economics at MIT. Gary Gensler, now the chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, used to be her father’s boss.

About her childhood, Ellison reveals to “Forbes” that she came into contact with economics a lot. Ellison is said to have written a research paper at the age of eight and given it to her father, in which she analyzed the prices of stuffed animals at Toys ‘R’ Us. At Newton North High School, Ellison’s mathematical talent turned out. She takes part in the Math Prize for Girls, one of the largest mathematics competitions in the world. In 2012 she began her math studies at Stanford University. Ruth Ackerman, one of her faculty members, characterizes Ellison as a “smart, focused, very mathematical person”.

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Like her later colleague and FTX founder Bankman-Fried, Ellison encountered effective altruism during her university days and became a member of Stanford’s Effective Altruism Club. Effective altruism is a philosophical movement that tries to use limited resources such as time and money to improve the lives of as many people as possible through cost-benefit calculations.

After her studies, Ellison works for the trading company Jane Street. There she meets Sam Bankman-Fried. The two get along well. Her interest in effective altruism is said to have played an important role. When Bankman-Fried founded cryptocurrency trading firm Alameda Research in 2018, he convinced Ellison to work with him. About her first impression of the trading company, Ellison told Forbes: “We had no idea what we were doing.”

Rise to Alameda CEO

In addition to Ellison, the Alameda Research team includes Bankman-Fried’s very good friends Nishad Singh, Gary Wang and Sam Trabucco. Ellison is the only woman on the team that relocated from Berkeley to Hong Kong in 2018. The Alameda managers lead a student life and trade in cryptocurrencies. While the men play video games, Ellison watches Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding. When Bankman-Fried founded the crypto exchange FTX in 2019, Ellison took on more responsibility at Alameda Research. In 2022, Ellison is on the Forbes 30 under 30 list with her co-CEO Sam Trabucco. In April, Trabucco steps down as CEO and Ellison becomes sole CEO.

Despite Bankman-Fried’s success, Ellison shuns the public eye. FTX staffers tell Forbes Ellison likes to stay behind the scenes. Nevertheless, the Alameda CEO maintains an online presence. In addition to her Twitter profile @carolinecapital, celebrity blog Gawker reports on two Tumblr profiles: worldoptimizatoin and worldoptimization-lifeadvice, which provide a glimpse into Ellison’s personal life.

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The Harry Potter fan shares book reviews on her tumblr profile. The last books she reviewed are The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik and Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beuman. Ellison also reads Substack by Matthew Yglesias, who writes on politics and economics. Ellison’s favorite color is gray and her most interesting celebrity encounter was with the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia had lived in the same house where the Ellison family later lived.

“As in the Imperial Harem”

On her Tumblr profile, Ellison shares her departure from traditional beliefs about relationships and gender roles. Over time, Ellison has become more and more “agnostic about society and culture.”

Crypto news outlet CoinDesk reports, citing anonymous sources, that Ellison was part of the FTX and Alameda team who lived together in the Bahamas. Each of the ten people in the house are said to have been involved in relationships with other team members. Even Ellison is said to have dated Bankman-Fried on and off. Ellison compares living in the house to an “imperial harem in China”. Ellison even reportedly shared a therapist named George Lerner with other team members.

Since investigating the FTX scandal, Ellison has been in hiding. Ellison has reduced her online presence and deleted her LinkedIn profile. https://twitter.com/carolinecapital/status/1589264375042707458 as of November 6, Ellison defends Alameda’s accounts. Both her whereabouts and her fate remain unknown.

This article was translated from English by Amin Al Magrebi. You can find the original here.


The article is in German

Tags: Caroline Eddison woman FTX crash