Following the fall of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire FTX, an unidentified employee has revealed that the company ruined the lives of many workers as they lost their life savings too.

Employees Had Their Life Savings On FTX

According to a statement shared by Wu Blockchain, most employees channelled their earnings back to FTX as Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) promoted the firm both internally and externally. They were encouraged to purchase the company’s stock.

The employees also received bonuses in FTX.COM stock and the FTK token (FTT). Hence, most of their funds were stored on the platform. The company also created products that made it easier for employees to send their salaries back to the exchange automatically.

Last October, after FTX bought out rival exchange Binance’s shares, SBF and head of product Ramnik Arora offered employees a chance to invest in FTX for the first time at a 50% discount, with a limit of $250,000. The amount was to be combined with a $250,000 investment from FTX US, the American affiliate of FTX, at market rate.

As per the statement, the deal was heavily marketed to employees, and since it seemed like an ‘amazing’ opportunity, people from top leadership roles to customer support jumped on it. They were asked to send the funds within two weeks and many invested more than they should have.

SBF and members of his inner circle promoted the purchase as an opportunity for workers to make 100% of their funds overnight and 4–5x in a few years. However, the reverse is now the case as FTX has tumbled down and even commenced a voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy process.

SBF Fired Workers While Claiming to Hire

Furthermore, while SBF claimed he was hiring employees during the mid-year layoff frenzy, he was doing the opposite. After explaining why FTX was still hiring on Twitter and talking about it on CNBC, the former CEO allegedly turned around and fired over 20 workers.

“Employees found out that they were being fired when they couldn’t speak in the Slack chat anymore. They were removed individually, one by one. Sam did not fire employees directly. He only posted a message in the internal Slack hours after the firing and more or less blamed the employees for not being culture fits,” the statement read.

~ By William A. Frederick ~