While Maxine Waters is ‘disappointed’ that her favorite crypto donor will not be attending this morning’s hearing on the FTX collapse (since he’s in jail), we do get to hear straight from one horse’s mouth on just what a shitshow the crypto exchange was.

With Sam Bankman-Fried languishing in Bahamian clink, the new FTX CEO John Ray III is free to explain to the House Committee on Financial Services about the total lack of governance when Sam Bankman-Fried ran the company:

Additionally, he blamed the failure of the crypto exchange on the lack of experience among prior management:

Finally, and most notably, Ray outlines some of the unacceptable management practices at the FTX Group identified so far include:

The use of computer infrastructure that gave individuals in senior management access to systems that stored customer assets, without security controls to prevent them from redirecting those assets;

The storing of certain private keys to access hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto assets without effective security controls or encryption;

The ability of Alameda, the crypto hedge fund within the FTX Group, to borrow funds held at FTX.com to be utilized for its own trading or investments without any effective limits;

The commingling of assets;

Read Ray’s full prepared remarks here…

Watch Live here (due to start at 1000ET):

https://www.youtube.com/embed/rWAnrigAO3I

---