Last week, a liquidity crunch forced the cryptocurrency exchange FTX to call out for help as it became overwhelmed by customers’ withdrawal requests. 

On Friday, the saga came to an end as the exchange declared bankruptcy, and its founder Sam Bankman-Fried stepped down. 

According to Reuters, at least one billion dollars is missing in customer deposits from the FTX exchange. 

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried secretly transferred $10 billion in funds from the exchange into a shady trading firm called Alameda, also owned by Bankman-Fried. 

According to Reuters, $1 to $2 billion in client money is still unaccounted for. 

The shady transfers of deposits from the exchange to Bankman-Fried’s Alameda firm, which engaged in risky, leveraged bets, will be the subject of investigation from governmental authorities and could be found illegal. 

Newly released data showed that Bankman-Fried was also the second-largest individual donor to the Democrat Party. 

In 2021-2022, Bankman-Fried gave $36,793,956 to Democrats. The origin of these funds is unclear. 

The Democrat’s largest donor for the same period was George Soros, who gave a total of $128,475,971 to the party.