FTX’s sister hedge fund, Alameda Research, lost at least $190 million of its trading funds due to arguably avoidable scams, according to a former engineer at the firm.
In an Oct. 12 post to X titled “The Hacks,” former Alameda Research engineer turned whistleblower Aditya Baradwaj claims that the firm’s “breathtaking” agility led to “major security incidents” as often as every few months.
Incident #1:
An Alameda trader got phished while trying to complete a DeFi transaction by accidentally clicking a fake link that had been promoted to the top of Google Search results
Cost: $100M+
Postmortem: Implemented extra checks on our internal wallet software
In an example of one of the biggest exploits, Baradwaj claims a trader at Alameda once lost more than $100 million of the firm’s funds after clicking a malicious link promoted to the top of Google Search results.
The trader was attempting to sign off on a decentralized finance transaction, said Baradwaj.
In another example, he said Alameda was yield farming on a new blockchain of “questionable legitimacy” — a move that saw the trading firm eventually rack up losses of more than $40 million.
Baradwaj wrote that FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried believed that the “single most important thing” for Alameda and FTX was their ability to move quickly. This ethos led to Alameda routinely ignoring industry-standard engineering and accounting practices for such firms, he said.
“This meant virtually no code testing and incomplete balance accounting. Safety checks for trading would only be added on an as-needed basis,” wrote Baradwaj.
“Blockchain private keys and exchange API keys were stored in plaintext in a file that several employees could access.”
This led to another security incident that cost the firm millions after an old version of the plaintext files containing keys to Alameda’s wallets were leaked.
The attacker transferred funds out of “some exchanges,” and the incurred losses tallied up to more than $50 million, explained Baradwaj.
These are just a few incidents – there’s many more, including from before my time at the company.
FTX had its own issues, including the MobileCoin fiasco that Gary recently testified about during the trial.
He said that Alameda suffered through “many more” incidents of similar scope to the ones he’d described, but many of these were before his time at the company.
Baradwaj’s comments come amid former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison taking the stand to testify against Bankman-Fried on the sixth day of his fraud trial. In the preceding days, a number of former colleagues, including Adam Yedidia and Gary Wang, have brought a wealth of new evidence against the former billionaire.
Ms Sultana also said she was “resigning” from the Labour Party after 14 years.
She was suspended as a Labour MP shortly after they came to power last summer for voting against the government maintaining the two-child benefit cap.
Several others from the left of the party, including Mr Corbyn, were also suspended for voting against the government, and also remained as independent MPs.
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However, Ms Sultana was still a member of the Labour Party – until now.
Mr Corbyn has previously said the independent MPs who were suspended from Labour would “come together” to provide an “alternative.
The other four are: Iqbal Mohamed, Shockat Adam, Ayoub Khan and Adnan Hussain.
Mr Corbyn and the other four independents have not said if they are part of the new party Ms Sultana announced.
In her announcement, Ms Sultana said she would vote to abolish the two-child benefit cap again and also voted against scrapping the winter fuel payment for most pensioners.
Ms Sultana also voted against the government’s welfare bill this week, which was heavily watered down as Sir Keir Starmer tried to prevent a major rebellion from his own MPs.
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Protesters block Israeli arms manufacturer in Bristol
On Wednesday, Ms Sultana spoke passionately against Palestine Action being proscribed as a terror organisation – but MPs eventually voted for it to be.
She said to proscribe it is “a deliberate distortion of the law to chill dissent, criminalise solidarity and suppress the truth”.
Ms Sultana said they were founding the new party because “Westminster is broken but the real crisis is deeper – just 50 families now own more wealth than half the UK population”.
She called Reform leader Nigel Farage “a billionaire-backed grifter” leading the polls “because Labour has completely failed to improve people’s lives.
Image: Ms Sultana called Nigel Farage a ‘billionaire-backed grifter’. Pic: PA
The MP, who has spoken passionately about Gaza, added: “Across the political establishment, from Farage to Starmer, they smear people of conscience trying to stop a genocide in Gaza as terrorists.
“But the truth is clear: this government is an active participant in genocide. And the British people oppose it.
“We are not going to take this anymore.”
A Labour Party spokesperson said: “In just 12 months, this Labour government has boosted wages, delivered an extra four million NHS appointments, opened 750 free breakfast clubs, secured three trade deals and four interest rate cuts lowering mortgage payments for millions.
“Only Labour can deliver the change needed to renew Britain.”