A former worker of crypto trade FTX has seemingly uncovered the corporate’s extreme luxurious expenditures, obsessive office tradition and grueling work hours resulting in the hiring of an organization psychiatrist within the 12 months earlier than its collapse.
Danielle Cloud, a former worker of FTX claiming to work within the advertising division, posted a sequence of Tweets on Dec. 13 saying FTX employed her in Oct. 2021 earlier than she resigned roughly two weeks in the past.
1. My ex – FTX
Two(ish) weeks in the past, I formally resigned from my place as an FTX worker.
— Dani Cloud (@daniiicloud) December 13, 2022
“Issues felt off. Cult-like,” Cloud wrote, describing the sensation when she first joined the trade and evaluating it to fraudulent ventures reminiscent of the luxurious music competition Fyre Pageant and well being expertise firm Theranos.
She claimed to have “by no means heard of” FTX or its founder Sam Bankman-Fried however stated “everybody employed at FTX was obsessed” with him.
“I supposed it made sense. The child was younger, the rules had been revolutionary, the concepts had been golden […] who was I to problem that?”
Cloud claimed the “finest means” to land a task at FTX was to “be the feminine partner of an current worker” who may apparently inside “a month or two” make their means into an govt place.
“Those that challenged it had been churned,” she claimed.
Day off from work was additionally a “joke” based on Cloud. “The work week was Monday to Sunday,” she stated and a coworker was “chewed out” for asking if the corporate had break day for Thanksgiving.
Cloud began as a Know Your Buyer (KYC) analyst at FTX US, the corporate’s United States arm, and was promoted to a full-time advertising position in Might 2022 — a place that required her “to work out of the Bahamas majority of the time.”
FTX’s extra luxurious expenditures
“The whole operation was iconically and moronically inefficient,” Cloud stated concerning the trade’s headquarters within the Bahamas, “I by no means knew all of the issues cash may purchase.”
She claimed FTX both bought or rented multimillion-dollar properties for its executives who threw lavish home events and had non-public cooks.
11. The half dozen condos leased/bought by FTX at no cost worker entry… Along with the expensed stays in luxurious motels. pic.twitter.com/RqCVfjm7eX
— Dani Cloud (@daniiicloud) December 14, 2022
Staff had been offered “expensed stays in luxurious motels” along with entry to the “half dozen condos” rented or purchased by the corporate.
FTX’s Bahamian workplace had “meals catered 24/7” with worker perks purported to incorporate free groceries, a month-to-month pop-up barber and fortnightly massages.
The Commodities Future Buying and selling Fee (CFTC) on Dec. 13 filed a lawsuit towards Bankman-Fried claiming he used FTX buyer funds for luxurious actual property purchases.
FTX reportedly spent over $250 million on actual property purchases shopping for 35 properties within the Bahamas as per a Dec. 13 report from CNBC.
Why a shrink was introduced into FTX
Because of the excessive workload calls for, Cloud stated Bankman-Fried introduced in a psychiatrist, Dr. George Okay. Lerner.
A now-deleted profile on Bankman-Fried written in September by enterprise agency Sequoia Capital described Lerner as “the one that is aware of [Bankman-Fried] the most effective” and “the FTX firm therapist.”
Cloud stated Lerner was “propositioned as a coach” there to seek the advice of on enterprise development and was stated to be “important” to FTX worker satisfaction and its retention technique, however alleged Lerner requested her intimate questions on her relationship together with her fiancé.
She additionally claimed administration employees had been “pushed to illegally ship prescriptions to Nassau” which had been written in California and Florida.
In a Dec. 13 congressional listening to FTX’s CEO John Ray stated there was “no file protecting in anyway” on the firm, and lots of invoices and expense receipts had been submitted by way of the messaging app Slack.
FTX additionally used the accounting software program Quickbooks based on Ray who stated he has “nothing towards Quickbooks” nevertheless it’s not a software “for a multi-billion-dollar firm.”
