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Alameda Research, the crypto trading fund founded by FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried will wind down its trading, he said. Bankman-Fried made the announcement in a Twitter thread Thursday.
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In the thread, Bankman-Fried apologized to users of FTX.com, the international arm of FTX.
The crypto exchange is in the midst of a liquidity crisis, and Bankman-Fried said he miscalculated the amount of liquid assets the exchange had available for customer withdrawals.
“We saw roughly $5b of withdrawals on Sunday--the largest by a huge margin,” he wrote on Twitter, adding that he plans to spend the week trying to raise liquidity at the company. “I can’t make any promises about that. But I’m going to try.”
Bankman-Fried also stressed that the U.S. arm of FTX was “100% liquid.”
Alameda Research’s website went dark Wednesday, showing an announcement which read “this site is currently private.”
Semafor has previously reported that much of the crypto exchange’s legal and compliance teams had quit. FTX recently sought a bailout from competitor Binance after seeking a $1 billion bailout from Wall Street investors.
Bankman-Fried, the exchange’s CEO and a Semafor investor, tweeted Tuesday that his company had reached an agreement to sell FTX to its larger rival Binance. By Wednesday, Binance had backed out of the deal, saying the company’s “issues are beyond our control or ability to help.”
Binance did not specify what issues it located after it examined FTX’s books.
