Caroline Ellison, who used to be a co-CEO of Alameda Research and one of the main figures of the FTX downfall, is going to be released this week, nearly one year before her two-year prison sentence awarded by a federal court.

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons reported that Ellison, at 31 years old, will be released on Wednesday, the 21st of January, into a residential reentry management program in New York, the final step in her release from a federal prison.

Following the collapse of FTX in November 2022, amidst a liquidity crunch and claims of all-around misappropriation of customer funds, Ellison admitted the next month to seven felony counts.

The indictments are for such things as wire fraud, securities fraud, commodities fraud, and money laundering conspiracy.

Ellison’s Testimony Exposed the Inner Workings of the FTX Fraud

Her prosecutors claimed that under her tenure, Alameda Research had an open line of credit with FTX that had allowed the transfer of billions of dollars of customer deposits into the trading company without any obstruction.

Such funds were subsequently found to have been spent on covering the losses incurred by Alameda, on high-risk investments, political donations, and a range of other expenses, all the time letting customers think that their money was safely held by the exchange.

Ellison confessed in court that these were done under orders of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of both FTX and Alameda, and her evidence became the keystone of the government case.

Prosecutors described Ellison as a “remarkable” and “exemplary” witness who met with investigators roughly 20 times and helped decode the inner mechanics of the fraud.

During Bankman-Fried’s 2023 trial, she spent three days on the stand detailing how customer funds were misused and how Alameda was shielded from normal risk controls.

Bankman-Fried was ultimately convicted and sentenced in March to nearly 25 years in prison, along with an order to repay up to $11 billion in losses.

He has since filed an appeal and has publicly explored the possibility of a presidential pardon, which President Trump said was denied.

Ellison, by contrast, received a sharply reduced sentence.

In September 2024, she was sentenced by Judge Lewis Kaplan to serve 2 years in jail, declining the request of her lawyers to have no jail time but noting that her cooperation made her unlike other defendants.

In November 2024, she started her sentence in a low-security prison in Danbury, Connecticut, and was transferred to community confinement, sometimes known as a halfway house, in October 2025.

FTX Cooperators Exit Custody as Legal Penalties Remain

Residential reentry centers are constructed to assist inmates in integrating back into society under federal oversight.

Residents are kept under close supervision, restricted from movement unless under permit for approved activities, subject to frequent drug and alcohol testing, and required to meet financial requirements, such as paying a given percentage of income as part of living expenses.

The Bureau of Prisons typically uses these facilities in the final months of a sentence, and inmates housed there are still considered to be in federal custody.

The projected release date of Ellison was later changed to January 2026 based on time, good conduct, and the credit she enjoys due to providing substantial help to prosecutors.

Her discharge technically brings to an end the custodial period of the key cooperating witnesses in the FTX matter.

Former FTX Chief Technology Officer Gary Wang and former co-lead engineer Nishad Singh also cooperated and received no prison time, while former executive Ryan Salame, who did not cooperate, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison.

Although Ellison is leaving custody, her legal consequences are far from over.

She remains subject to supervision and has been ordered to forfeit $11 billion as part of the case.

In recent months, the Securities and Exchange Commission has also moved to bar Ellison, Wang, and Singh from serving as officers or directors of any public company for several years.

The post Caroline Ellison Walks Free 10 Months Early After FTX Testimony – What Happens Next? appeared first on Cryptonews.

Bitcoin Magazine

FTX-Fraudster Caroline Ellison Set for Release From Federal Custody After Serving Reduced Sentence

Caroline Ellison, the former co-CEO of Alameda Research and a central figure in the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, is expected to be released from federal custody on Wednesday after serving roughly 440 days of a two-year prison sentence, according to data from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons. 

Ellison, 31, is expected to exit from a residential reentry management facility — commonly known as a halfway house — in New York, where she has been held in community confinement since late 2025. 

Her early release came approximately ten months ahead of her original projected term and reflects credit for cooperation with prosecutors and good conduct while incarcerated.

Ellison was sentenced in September 2024 to two years in prison after pleading guilty in December 2022 to multiple fraud and conspiracy charges tied to the misuse of customer funds at FTX and the trading firm Alameda Research. 

She began serving her sentence in November 2024 at a federal facility in Connecticut before being transferred to community confinement.

Ellison’s role in FTX

As part of her plea agreement, Ellison cooperated extensively with federal authorities and testified against former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried during his criminal trial in 2023.

Her testimony detailed how Alameda and FTX commingled customer assets, concealed financial losses, and relied on an effectively unlimited line of credit that allowed Alameda to draw directly from FTX customer deposits.

That evidence played a key role in Bankman-Fried’s conviction on multiple fraud charges. He was sentenced in March 2025 to nearly 25 years in prison and ordered to forfeit up to $11 billion in assets to compensate investors and lenders.

Federal regulators have barred Ellison from serving as an officer or director of a public company or cryptocurrency exchange for ten years. 

The Securities and Exchange Commission has also sought similar prohibitions against other former FTX executives who cooperated with authorities, including former CTO Gary Wang and ex-engineering head Nishad Singh, both of whom avoided prison time.

FTX collapsed in November 2022 after a liquidity crisis exposed a multibillion-dollar hole in its balance sheet, triggering one of the largest bankruptcies in the history of the crypto industry.

Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison reportedly had an on-again, off-again romantic and professional relationship, living together with other FTX executives in a Bahamian penthouse while working closely at Alameda Research. 

This post FTX-Fraudster Caroline Ellison Set for Release From Federal Custody After Serving Reduced Sentence first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was once a name whispered in awe across fashion, tech, sports, and business circles alike. Charismatic, seemingly brilliant, and strikingly young, he built a reputation as the poster child of crypto innovation. A prodigy with a degree in Physics and Mathematics from MIT (2014), he spent three years at the notoriously competitive quantitative trading firm Jane Street Capital, specializing in international ETF trading and effective-altruism-linked arbitrage strategies, quickly rising through the ranks to notable success.

Headlines painted him as the altruistic genius of decentralized finance, a figure promising a new financial frontier. His companies-Alameda Research and FTX-were lauded as twin pillars of the crypto ecosystem: one, a high-octane trading engine; the other, a sleek global exchange.

Altruistic genius in crypto? You might ask where the link comes from. After Jane Street, SBF joined the Center for Effective Altruism (EA), and his early impressions stayed with him. Throughout his career, he remained a prominent donor to the EA movement; a philosophy which emphasizes using evidence and reason to do the most good, famously through “earn to give” strategies. A conscious capitalist in the crypto world seemed almost too good to be true, and indeed, it was.

His fall was as spectacular as his rise. Within months, SBF went from celebrated wunderkind to emblem of governance failure. Convicted in March 2024 on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy, he is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence for massive fraud related to his cryptocurrency exchange, FTX. His downfall severely tarnished EA’s reputation, raising questions about whether his criminality exposed flaws in the movement’s emphasis on calculation and risk (wherein the ends justified questionable means) or whether it was simply a personal moral failure.

I find these two videos on effective altruism particularly insightful:

Where It All Went Wrong: Governance and Risk Management Failures

At the heart of FTX’s collapse lay catastrophic internal control failures. Publicly, Sam Bankman-Fried projected an image of a disciplined innovator; a genius orchestrating complex markets with efficiency, transparency and integrity. Behind the scenes, the accounting and operational architecture told a different and messier story; one of blurred lines, missing documentation, and cultural permissiveness that turned operational gaps into systemic risk.

1. Commingling of Funds
   Alameda Research and FTX were designed to operate as separate entities, but in practice, their balance sheets were deeply entangled. In a traditional financial institution, client deposits and proprietary trading capital are segregated, with robust reconciliation routines. Under Sam’s fiefdom, client deposits flowed into Alameda’s trading operations, and proprietary trading profits (often speculative) were shuffled back through FTX accounts. Employees described ad hoc transfers and informal approvals, with SBF’s word effectively acting as the ultimate authorization.

From an accounting standpoint, this violated the principle of fiduciary segregation: assets held in trust for clients cannot simultaneously fund speculative positions. The consequences were immediate; when markets turned, there was no clear record of whose money was where, leaving both clients and regulators in the dark.

2. Lack of Audit-Ready Records
Attempting to reconcile FTX’s books was like chasing shadows. Transactions were logged irregularly and inconsistently, some journal entries were incomplete, lacking clear audit trails and essential supporting documentation was missing. Auditors would struggle to verify existence, completeness, or valuation — core financial assertions that underpin trust in any institution. SBF reportedly treated accounting as a “loose operational tool” rather than a governance backbone, leaving auditors with little more than piecemeal spreadsheets and anecdotes.

3. Opaque Policies and Internal Procedures
Policies on risk limits, counterparty exposure, and collateral management were often verbal, informal or undocumented (i.e., outright absent). Without explicit controls, employees routinely relied on SBF’s discretion for approvals and exceptions, creating a world where the founder’s judgment substituted for governance frameworks. Textbook failure!! Internal controls require formalized procedures, segregation of duties, and escalation pathways, and in the absence of these, small errors escalated unchecked, eventually amplifying exposure across trading desks and the exchange itself.

Here are two super interesting videos for more context:

4. Disclosure Failures
To the outside world, FTX appeared rock-solid. Press releases, interviews, and social media painted a picture of liquidity, solvency, and innovation. In reality, internal ledgers suggested a far different story. Investors and regulators were left assuming stability based on PR narratives rather than verifiable financial statements. GAAP, IFRS, and prudential norms call for transparent recognition and disclosure of: risks, intercompany transactions, and contingent liabilities; standards that FTX repeatedly failed to meet. These omissions were blind spots that masked systemic fragility.

GAAP, IFRS, and prudential norms call for transparent recognition and disclosure of risks, intercompany transactions, and contingent liabilities.

5. Risk Culture Gone Wrong
Perhaps the most insidious failure was cultural. SBF cultivated a workplace ethos of ambition and improvisation: rapid risk-taking without documentation, oversight, or accountability. While this approach produced short-term market gains, it systematically bypassed the safeguards that prevent catastrophic loss. Tools that ensure resilience in traditional finance were either ignored or applied inconsistently. The result was a high-speed financial engine with no brakes, entirely dependent on luck and goodwill.

Using Accounting Protocols to Diagnose the Collapse

Viewed through the lens of accounting and internal controls, FTX’s failure can be mapped to familiar failure points:

• Segregation of assets → ignored, enabling liquidity shocks.
• Audit-ready bookkeeping → absent, preventing reliable oversight.
• Policy and procedure documentation → minimal, allowing arbitrary decision-making.
• Disclosure compliance → superficial, masking financial health.
• Internal audit & risk monitoring → underdeveloped, leaving gaps in early warning systems.

The lesson for CFOs, auditors, and regulators is that flashy growth and market prominence cannot substitute for disciplined control frameworks, enforceable policies, and verifiable accounting records.

Bottom Line

FTX’s story isn’t a morality tale about one individual’s hubris; it is a case study in how ignoring internal controls, accounting discipline, and risk infrastructure can lead to catastrophic failure for startups. For the next generation of crypto companies/startups, the blueprint is clear: segregated funds, documented procedures, audit trails, and transparent disclosure are non-negotiable. Anything else, no matter how dazzling, is rat poison dressed up as innovation.

Here are some informative reads on the whole fiasco:

• Going Infinite: Sam Lewis
• Stealing the Future: David Morris
• Crypto Confidential: Jake Donoghue

Lessons from FTX: Internal Controls Gone Wrong was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Bitcoin Magazine

Trump Says He Won’t Pardon Sam Bankman-Fried

President Donald Trump said this week that he has no intention of pardoning Sam Bankman-Fried, the former FTX chief executive who is serving a lengthy federal prison sentence for one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history.

In an interview with The New York Times, Trump was asked whether he would consider granting clemency to several high-profile inmates. Among the names raised was Bankman-Fried, the onetime cryptocurrency billionaire convicted in 2023 of stealing billions of dollars from FTX customers. 

Trump’s response was that he is not considering it, according to The New York Times.

The remark puts somewhat of a stop to months of speculation inside crypto and political circles about whether Bankman-Fried might angle for relief from a president who has frequently criticized federal prosecutors and used his pardon power aggressively.

Bankman-Fried was sentenced in November 2024 to 25 years in prison after a New York jury found him guilty on seven counts, including wire fraud and conspiracy. Prosecutors said he orchestrated a scheme that diverted customer funds to prop up his hedge fund, Alameda Research, while presenting FTX as a safe and compliant exchange. 

The collapse wiped out billions in customer assets and triggered a global crackdown on crypto firms.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s push for a pardon

Since his conviction, Bankman-Fried and those close to him have pursued multiple avenues that appeared designed to soften his public image and create openings for clemency. 

In early 2024, Bankman-Fried gave a rare jailhouse interview to Tucker Carlson, portraying himself as misunderstood and claiming FTX customers would have been “made whole” absent government intervention. 

The interview circulated widely among conservative audiences and was seen by many as a calculated appeal to Trump-aligned media figures.

Around the same time, Bankman-Fried’s parents, both Stanford law professors, sent letters to the court seeking leniency at sentencing, emphasizing his charitable intentions and arguing that a decades-long prison term would be excessive. 

While not directed at Trump, the effort reinforced a broader strategy of reframing Bankman-Fried as a flawed but non-malicious actor rather than a criminal mastermind. 

Bankman-Fried has also highlighted his past political realignment. Though he was one of the largest donors to Democrats in the 2022 cycle, he later claimed in interviews that he had secretly given comparable amounts to Republicans and had grown disillusioned with the Biden administration. 

Those comments were widely interpreted as an attempt to distance himself from Democratic power centers and signal openness to a future Republican-led clemency process.

Trump, however, has not shown any public sympathy. While he has argued that allies prosecuted under the Biden administration were victims of a “weaponized” Justice Department, Bankman-Fried’s case does not fit that narrative. The fraud investigation began before Biden took office and was driven by customer losses and internal FTX records.

President Trump did pardon Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) in October 2025 for his 2023 guilty plea to money laundering violations, a move framed by the White House as ending the Biden administration’s “war on cryptocurrency” and a potential pathway for Binance to re-enter the U.S. market. 

This post Trump Says He Won’t Pardon Sam Bankman-Fried first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Bitcoin Magazine

Ledn Publishes Industry-First Monthly Loan Book and Proof of Reserves Data

Ledn, one of the world’s largest bitcoin lenders, announced its Open Book Report, a reserves transparency benchmark designed to expose the kind of risk that caused the 2022 FTX-driven crypto crash. 

According to a press release shared with Bitcoin Magazine, “Traditional lenders (including Citi, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, BNY Mellon, Schwab, and Bank of America) are reportedly entering the space amid a regulatory vacuum in terms of rehypothecation practices and proof of reserves.” With the passing of the GENIUS Act, which greenlit treasury-backed stablecoins, Wall Street now has a road to service the crypto market and even upgrade its own rails and infrastructure. 

But there are still those who call for clearer regulatory structure for crypto counter parties, Ledn points out that “Global rules on crypto capital requirements & proof of reserves remain in flux, with the US and UK refusing to implement Basel’s proposed framework,” adding that “IOSCO is pushing regulators to hold crypto custody and lending to the standards of traditional finance, yet almost no institution has disclosed how bitcoin collateral is managed, whether it’s rehypothecated, or what happens in a liquidation scenario.” 

John Glover, Chief Investment Officer at Ledn and former Managing Director at Barclays, explained that “If lenders do not have to disclose how they use client collateral, the clients become the leverage. We saw what happened when BlockFi, Celsius, and Voyager operated in the dark. The difference now is that the balance sheets are bigger.” He warned that “This is how we get a 2022-style lending crisis at institutional scale.”

Ledn’s Open Book Report, launched today, showcases “the industry’s longest-running Proof of Reserves,” according to the press release. The report exposes Ledn’s BTC loan book, collateral levels, and aggregate loan-to-value ratios. According to the report, the Network Firm LLP, a U.S.-based certified public accounting firm, independently audited & confirmed that 100% of collateral is held in custody.

The report also reveals “$868 million in outstanding BTC-backed loans, with 18,488 BTC in collateral posted, held 100% BTC in custody; all BTC collateral is held in on-chain addresses and/or custodial accounts.” Ledn’s average loan-to-value ratio stands at 55%, an aggregate LTV well below industry liquidation thresholds. Since 2018, the company has funded “$10.2 billion in lifetime loans across 47,000 originations.”

This framework looks to move the industry past one-off snapshots—starting with monthly disclosures and laying the groundwork for more continuous, real-time transparency over time. Unlike self-reported wallet addresses, Ledn’s approach combines monthly reporting on loan book metrics—including outstanding loans, collateral posted, and average LTV—with reporting from The Network Firm LLP. Ledn also maintains Proof of Reserves attestations on a semiannual basis (every two quarters), confirming that assets exceed client liabilities, with “Merkle tree methodology” enabling clients to confirm their balances were included.

While some companies have announced “proof of reserves” by publishing wallet addresses, Glover argues this falls short. “True transparency requires independent reporting, regular updates, and methodologies anyone can check,” said Glover. “Clients shouldn’t have to take anyone’s word for it.”

Ledn recently received a strategic investment from Tether and has an impeccable track record of protecting client assets across its loan originations, surviving the 2022 crypto lender crisis, and at least one other bear market before that. 

The press release warns that “as traditional financial institutions accelerate their entry into bitcoin-backed lending, Ledn’s Open Book Report establishes the baseline against which these new entrants should be held, before regulators mandate it.” 

This post Ledn Publishes Industry-First Monthly Loan Book and Proof of Reserves Data first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Juan Galt.

The former CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, said in an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin that he did not intend to do anything wrong and wants to ensure customers receive their money back.

"I didn't ever try to commit fraud on anyone. I was shocked at what happened this month," Bankman Fried said.

"Whatever happened, why it happened, I had a duty to our stakeholders, our customers, our investors, the regulators of the world, to do right by them," he added.

Even if you believe your exchange is trustworthy, storing your cryptocurrency in a cryptocurrency exchange is never a good idea. So, if you have crypto and you don't want to lose them, take them out of your online wallet and store them somewhere that is not connected to the network or internet.

Why You Should Always Store Your Crypto Offline

It is more secure from hackers, and even if all the crypto exchanges in the world fail, you will still have your crypto.

If you want to know how to store your cryptos offline, Google it, man. I'm just kidding, here are some  amazing articles that explain how you can securely store your crypto:

• https://www.investopedia.com/news/bitcoin-safe-storage-cold-wallet
• https://coinledger.io/blog/best-places-to-store-your-cryptocurrency
• https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/what-are-safest-ways-to-store-cryptocurrency