For the past week, Dr. Lerner has had a front row seat to the implosion of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s empire. First, the dramatic collapse of FTX, which followed what was the equivalent of a bank run caused by a rival crypto exchange. Then the revelations of a multi-billion dollar shortfall on FTX’s balance sheet, which allegedly stemmed from money it funneled into Alameda Research, a crypto hedge fund closely associated with FTX, and a mysterious hack that made more than $500 million was missing from the FTX balance. treasury. And now, the many, many irate FTX clients, regulators and law enforcement who want to know what happened and where all the money went.
Dr. Lerner declined to say whether he had spoken to Mr Bankman-Fried since the bankruptcy. He is focused on helping FTX’s employees come to grips with what happened, he said.
“I’ve been doing a little hand-holding to make sure people get home safely,” he said.
There has been a lot of buzz over the past few days about FTX’s unusual corporate culture. The company, which had about 300 employees, was run primarily by twentysomethings, some of whom shared Mr. Bankman-Fried’s interest in effective altruism. Some employees of FTX lived together in a royal group house. Several are or used to be in romantic relationships with each other, including Mr. Bankman-Fried, who had been in a relationship with Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison.
Details about the romantic pairings reported by CoinDesk last week led some gossip on Twitter to call FTX a “polycule,” a term for a web of non-monogamous relationships.
But dr. Lerner rejected that notion, saying the corporate culture was far from orgiastic.
“It’s a pretty tame place,” Dr. Lerner said. “The higher placed mainly played chess and board games. There was no partying. In any case, they were undersexed.”
Dr. Lerner, 46, described FTX as a company full of hard-working and cerebral young people who believed deeply in the company’s mission. Many had moved to the Bahamas from major cities in the United States and Asia, he said. Few employees went out at night or made local friends; usually, he said, they spent long days and nights in the office.
