FTX rose from its 2019 founding to a $32 billion valuation and the third-largest crypto exchange in the world, manufacturing an illusion of safety through stadium naming rights, Formula One sponsorships, and endorsements from Tom Brady and Steph Curry. Beneath that polished marble storefront, founder Sam Bankman-Fried and a tight circle of executives secretly funneled $10 billion of customer deposits to their sister hedge fund, Alameda Research, which enjoyed a hidden exemption from the exchange's auto-liquidation system and propped up its balance sheet with the manufactured FTT token.

This episode traces the catastrophic 72-hour unraveling: a CoinDesk report exposing Alameda's reliance on FTT, Binance CEO CZ's decision to liquidate his FTT holdings, a $6 billion bank run, and the collapse of a non-binding Binance bailout. We follow the ban ...