In November, the FTX exchange, which had run flashy Super Bowl ads featuring Larry David and Tom Brady, crashed. A report on Coindesk revealed that Alameda Research, the hedge fund affiliated with FTX and run out of the same office, had a large amount of a coin made by FTX, raising concerns about how liquid FTX really was. It was later revealed that customer deposits at FTX were commingled with Alameda, which is against standard banking practices. Clients started withdrawing their money from the exchange, which led FTX to bankruptcy. An estimate billion dollar worth of customer funds were lost and waves of collapse threaten the entire crypto ecosystem.
Bankman-Fried denied committing fraud in a interview with CNBC last month and said he was shocked by the collapse of the exchange.
Bankman-Fried was supposed to appear before Congress on Tuesday to testify before the House Financial Services. On Monday morning, she took to Twitter to say that she planned to appear remotely due to paparazzi concerns.
