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Caroline Ellison wanted to step down but feared a bank run on FTX
Former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison recognized she wasn’t doing a good job months before the company filed for bankruptcy, but Sam Bankman-Fried persuaded…

Former Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison recognized she wasn’t doing a good job months before the company filed for bankruptcy, but Sam Bankman-Fried persuaded her to stay.
Caroline Ellison wasn’t doing a good job leading Alameda Research in 2022, and she did not hide it. Excerpts from her personal notes shared as evidence by prosecutors in Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial revealed details about the trading firm’s struggles and its CEO’s desire to resign weeks and months before FTX collapsed.
Ellison spent over 10 hours testifying during Bankman-Fried’s trial this past week, notably entering through the front doors of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, joined by her attorneys. Ellison said she had not seen Bankman-Fried since the crypto empire failed in November 2022, but their communication had eroded months before.
In April 2022, their romantic relationship ended, and Caroline started avoiding meetings with Bankman-Fried even though they still lived in the same luxurious apartment in the Bahamas. Alameda’s growing liabilities with FTX and the breakup with Bankman-Fried made her consider leaving the company altogether.
“I feel like neither [Sam] Trabucco nor I have been doing a great job of pushing on stuff,” she wrote in the document to Bankman-Fried, which was shared as evidence during her cross-examination by the former FTX CEO’s defense counsel.
One more Caroline Ellison courtroom sketch.
— Ariel Givner, Esq. (@GivnerAriel) October 11, 2023
This one featuring SBF himself! https://t.co/q3O6xqxEhl pic.twitter.com/cQJbj5V1H7
Bankman-Fried asked her to stay on, saying that her departure could create rumors about Alameda’s financial health, thus harming FTX’s credibility, so Ellison remained CEO.
Ellison joined Alameda as a trader in 2018. By 2020, she handled most of the company’s operations, while Bankman-Fried focused on his newly launched crypto exchange, FTX. In August 2021, she became co-CEO alongside Sam Trabucco, who stepped down a few months later, leaving her in charge of the company. In August 2022, Trabucco officially resigned as co-CEO.
Ellison was against creating FTX, she revealed. “I didn’t think of myself as ambitious before I started at Alameda, but I believe I became more ambitious” under Bankman-Fried’s incentive, she said.
As CEO, Ellison was in charge of handling Alameda’s crypto lenders. In mid-2022, after the Terra ecosystem failed, the company’s open-term loans stood at $1.3 billion. The market downturn drained liquidity from crypto assets, prompting Alameda’s lenders to demand loan repayments.
According to Ellison, Bankman-Fried instructed her to keep repaying creditors via Alameda’s line of credit with FTX. In other words, Alameda would use FTX’s customer assets to repay crypto lenders. At the time, its line of credit with the exchange stood at $13 billion.
As lenders demanded loan repayments and Alameda’s balance sheets, Bankman-Fried suggested Ellison use “alternative means” for presenting the company’s financials. In the following months, Ellison would create many additional versions of a balance sheet to deceive creditors.
Early in November 2022, an alternative version of Alameda’s balance sheet was leaked. Ellison was on vacation in Japan at the time, but she had to travel to FTX Hong Kong’s office to deal with the company’s crisis.
While the balance sheet data didn’t reflect the company’s reality, it was enough to spread rumors and trigger a bank run on FTX a few days later, exposing an $8 billion gap between the companies.
Having cooperated with the U.S. Department of Justice since December 2022, Ellison will soon receive her sentence regarding the seven counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud she was charged with.
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blockchain crypto cryptoUncategorized
Bitcoin price must break $31K to avoid 2023 ‘bearish fractal’
BTC price needs to recoup some more key levels before ditching longer-term bearish risk, the latest Bitcoin analysis says.
Bitcoin…

BTC price needs to recoup some more key levels before ditching longer-term bearish risk, the latest Bitcoin analysis says.
Bitcoin (BTC) held above $30,000 at the Oct. 23 Wall Street open as analysis said BTC price strength could cancel its “bearish fractal.”

BTC price preserves majority of early upside
Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView followed BTC/USD as it hovered near $30,700, still up 2.5% on Oct. 23.
The largest cryptocurrency made snap gains after the Oct. 22 weekly close, stopping just shy of $31,000 in what became its highest levels since July.
Now, popular trader and analyst Rekt Capital is keen to see the $31,000 level break.
“Bitcoin has Weekly Closed above the Lower High resistance to confirm the breakout,” he commented alongside the weekly chart.

Rekt Capital argued that BTC/USD could disregard the bearish chart fractal in play throughout 2023 next. This had involved the two year-to-date highs near $32,000 forming a doubletop formation, with downside due as a result.
Specifically, Bitcoin requires a “breach” of $31,000 in order to do so.
#BTC
— Rekt Capital (@rektcapital) October 23, 2023
Is Bitcoin on the cusp of invalidating the Bearish Fractal?
Here are the Bearish Fractal Invalidation Criteria:
a) Bull Market Support Band holds as support ✅
b) Weekly Close beyond Lower High resistance ✅
c) Breach of $31k yearly highs ❌$BTC #Crypto #Bitcoin https://t.co/4H3OMiDzFB pic.twitter.com/mjoO8OF1Qs
More encouraging cues came from the True Market Deviation indicator from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode.
As noted by its lead analyst, Checkmate, on Oct. 23, the metric, also known as the Average Active Investor (AVIV) profit ratio, has crossed a key level.
Bitcoin’s True Mean Market price (TMM) — the level that BTC/USD spends exactly 50% above or below — is now below its spot price, at $29,780.
“Have we now paid our bear market dues?” Checkmate queried, describing TMM as Bitcoin’s “most accurate cost basis model.”

Institutions awaken in “Uptober"
Analyzing the potential drivers of the rally, meanwhile, James Van Straten, research and data analyst at crypto insights firm CryptoSlate, flagged the potential approval of the United States’ first Bitcoin spot-price-based exchange-traded fund (ETF).
Related: BTC price nears 2023 highs — 5 things to know in Bitcoin this week
While not yet awarded the green light, a U.S. spot ETF is being treated as an inevitability after legal battles resulted in regulators losing sway.
“The potential approval of a spot ETF for Bitcoin has spurred a significant increase in bullish inflows in the crypto market,” Van Straten wrote in an update published on Oct. 23.
He noted that Glassnode data shows inflows via over-the-counter (OTC) trading desks spiking since late September.
“In addition, the Purpose Bitcoin ETF, with its holdings of approximately 25,000 Bitcoin, has observed consistent inflow throughout the past month. Even though these inflows might not be termed as ‘large,’ they denote a positive market sentiment,” he continued.
“This uptick in inflows across various platforms indicates an optimistic market response to the potential approval of a Bitcoin ETF, bolstering the overall landscape of digital assets.”

The largest Bitcoin institutional investment vehicle, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC), continues to see a lower discount to the Bitcoin spot price, having already seen its smallest negative margin since December 2021.
This stood at -13.12% as of Oct. 23, per data from monitoring resource CoinGlass.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.
cryptocurrency bitcoin crypto btc etf cryptoUncategorized
California bill aims to cap crypto ATM withdrawals at $1K per day to combat scams
A new legislative investigation found some crypto ATMs charging a premium as high as 33%, while a few ATMs had limits of up to $50,000.
…


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An airline just launched one of the country’s longest domestic flights
The trip from New York’s JFK to Anchorage International Airport will take over seven hours.

While the title for longest commercial flight in the world will soon be taken over by the 20-hour and 10,576-mile journey between Sydney and London that Australia's Qantas Airways (QUBSF) - Get Free Report is preparing to launch in 2025, the U.S. is a big country with a number of long-haul domestic flights on its own.
Without even looking at U.S. territories overseas such as Guam or American Samoa, one can spend more than 10 hours in the air and end up only in another state. Some of the longest domestic flights in the U.S. include routes from Boston to Honolulu in Hawaii and Chicago to Alaska's Anchorage.
Related: The World's Longest Flight Is a New Route: Here's Where It Goes
In a move to bring more service from mainland U.S. to Alaska, Alaska Airlines (ALK) - Get Free Report is about to launch its longest flight yet that is subsequently also one of the longest in the country — the route from New York's JFK to Anchorage International Airport will take over seven hours and cross 3,386 miles.
Image source: Shutterstock
New flight takes travelers to 'land of midnight sun'
The route will debut on June 13, 2024 and take place daily on a Boeing 737-8 (BA) - Get Free Report. The airline recently invested in the plane with the longest capacity in its fleet to be able to serve faraway destinations on the East Coast.
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"We're eager to welcome guests to our great state from the city that never sleeps to the land of the midnight sun on Alaska's new nonstop flight," Jillian Simpson, president and CEO of the Alaska Travel Industry Association, said in a statement. "There's so much to do in Anchorage and in the smaller towns nearby, mapping out your itinerary might be the toughest thing you do before heading west."
The route is part of Alaska Airlines' wider efforts to expand its coverage between Alaska and the mainland U.S. On May 18, it will also launch a nonstop route between Anchorage and San Diego that will take just over six hours and span nearly 2,500 miles. While the airline serves many Californian cities, San Diego's smaller size meant that residents would have previously needed to transfer in Seattle or LA on their way to Alaska.
New routes meant to serve both burgeoning tourist interest and local demand
After adding the new flights, Alaska Airlines expects to have 63 flights a day leaving from Anchorage during the summer of 2024. This is designed to meet the burgeoning traveler interest in the state as well as serve Alaskans who are separated from large American cities by geography.
"Alaskans like to get out," the airline said in announcing the new routes. "Sometimes that might mean hitting all the must-sees in New York City or taking surf lessons in SoCal. We'll make it more convenient for our guests to get there from Anchorage, as well as lots of other places."
For those who are able to make travel plans this far in advance, both the New York and San Diego flights to Anchorage are already available for booking on Alaska Airlines' website. The former starts at $400 each way for mid-week departures, while flying into the state from San Diego will cost from $300.
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