Ex-FTX boss Constance Wang rips Sam Bankman-Fried Netflix show: | Latest Tech News
When crypto exchange FTX went up in flames in 2022 it misplaced billions of buyers’ money and eternally altered the public’s view of digital currencies.
It rapidly emerged company CEO and Effective Altruist Sam Bankman-Fried had illegally moved billions from the exchange to prop up his hedge fund, run — at least on paper — by his one-time girlfriend and co-worker Caroline Ellison.
The incident has been made into new Netflix show “The Altruists,” billed as “a toxic love story inspired by a real fraud” which has appalled and gobsmacked those who had a ringside seat to the collapse.
Julia Garner and Anthony Boyle as Caroline Ellison and Sam Bankman-Fried in Netflix’s “The Altruists.” Former FTX employees say the real pair “barely spoke to each other at the office.” Netflix
FTX’s former chief working officer, Constance Wang, says attempting to painting what occurred through the lens of a love story is laughable.
“[Bankman-Fried’s] complete purpose was to change the world, make an influence, do good. Love, relationship, household appeared a bit secondary to him.
“The ‘Me and you against the world’ romantic thing? No f—ing way,” Wang told The Post in her first exclusive interview about FTX’s fall.
Wang is even a character in the show, performed by Madison Hu, but couldn’t even get through the trailer when a good friend confirmed it her over breakfast. “I literally physically threw up because it just made me feel so uncomfortable,” after about 40 seconds, she said.
She also slams the romance storyline at the middle of the show as laughable.
“For the longest time in the company we did not know they were dating, and we did not know Sam was capable of dating at all, because he was working all the time,” Wang said.
Constance Wang, FTX’s former COO, at the New York Stock Exchange at the peak of the crypto growth. She says no one from Netflix’s new collection ever requested her what actually occurred. Courtesy of Constance Waing
Netflix payments “The Altruists,” as “a toxic love story inspired by a real fraud.” Netflix
“I had a group chat with some of my close employees, and I was shocked. I was like, ‘Do you guys know this?’ They were like, ‘No. We thought you knew?’”
The show charts SBF, Ellison and their followers through their ill-fated journey to revolutionize the financial system along idealistic Effective Altruist traces, supposedly utilizing their money and intelligence to make the world a better place.
However, SBF purchased $35m occasion home in the Bahamas and took $8 billion of FTX buyers’ money to use in Alameda Research, inflicting the entire project to collapse. As federal law doesn’t make allowances for people who declare they’ll do good later, he’s now serving a 25-year sentence for fraud and money laundering.
Constance Wang talking for FTX at a crypto convention. She joined in early 2019 and went on to run its global growth. Courtesy of Constance Waing
Wang said she went to a couple of Effective Altruist events thrown by SBF and the motion — also at the middle of AI company Anthropic and other tech giants — wasn’t for her.
“They are actually sensible people. They speak about math, physics, biology. If it’s a dinner gathering on a Friday or Saturday night, I would favor more relaxed topics. But for them, those are their relaxed topics.
“You can hang out once, twice. But for a long time, it becomes hard.”
At the middle of the operation have been around 10 people who lived in the Bahamas with SBF and Ellison and have been “all paired up in romantic relationships with each other,” at one level, according to industry news website Coindesk.com
Bankman-Fried asleep on the workplace flooring while employees saved working around him. ‘He was working all the time,’ former employees said. Courtesy of Constance Waing
Ellison — who was also federally prosecuted after the collapse — claimed she had been polyamorous in since-deleted Tumblr post from 2020, writing: “When I first started my foray into poly, I thought of it as a radical break from my trad past. But tbh I’ve come to decide the only acceptable style of poly is best characterised as something like ‘imperial Chinese harem.’”
Such salacious habits was never witnessed by Wang. “I honestly did not know the word ‘orgy’ until I saw it in an article,” she said. “I had to Google it.”
Instead, she claims “the company was a bunch of nerds” and events she attended have been largely stuffed with “chess and board games.”
Caroline Ellison leaves Manhattan federal court after testifying against Sam Bankman-Fried in October 2023. In her diary, she apprehensive their on-again, off-again romance was ‘causing drama’ at the company. Gregory P. Mango
It’s unclear which model of the events Netflix — who didn’t reply to a request for remark — has dramatized in its collection, but Wang claims from what she’s seen they’ve already taken vital inventive liberties.
She famous the SBF she knew might barely maintain another individual’s gaze — in stark distinction to the assured hustler in the trailer for “The Altruists,” performed by Anthony Boyle.
“When I first met Sam in 2018 in Singapore, he was entirely incapable of looking at people’s eyes when talking to others,” she said. “He would look at the floor and then he’d shake his legs.”
Bankman-Fried leaves Manhattan federal court in June 2023, months before he was convicted of fraud. When Wang first met him in 2018, she says, he couldn’t look people in the attention. Alec Tabak for NY Post
Ellison, portrayed by Julia Garner on-screen, seems considerably ahead and aggressive in the trailer, but was “gentle” and “soft-spoken” in real life, Wang said. “She’s never aggressive. If you ask her a question, she will take a split second to think, and then start talking.”
Quinn Li, a former FTX advertising and marketing supervisor who also moved to the Bahamas to work alongside SBF thought the trailer was “very, very bad.”
“It brings in so much romance and emotional drama, when there really wasn’t much of that. The reality is that everyone was a very rational person,” Li told The Post.
“In the trailer, I didn’t see how smart Sam was, or how smart Caroline was. It looked like two silly cats in love.”
Julia Garner as Caroline Ellison in ‘The Altruists.’ Wang says the real Ellison was ‘gentle’ and ‘soft-spoken,’ and ‘never aggressive. Netflix
Wang recalled the fateful night time in November 2022 when the exchange crashed. Triggered by Binance founder Changpeng Zhao saying he would dump his FTX tokens, prospects pulled about $6 billion from the exchange in 72 hours.
Wang ran the VIP crew that dealt with the largest merchants, and she said the phrase from the top was to keep calm.
“The internal message we got from Sam is, ‘Let people withdraw. We’re fine,’” she said.
Constance Wang, with Bankman-Fried and FTX colleagues, on her first grocery run in the Bahamas in October 2021. Courtesy of Constance Waing
Some loyal prospects even put their money back in. “No one, including me, doubted what Sam was telling us, because we had this deep, deep trust in him,” Wang said.
When withdrawals stopped going through, “we were told, ‘Oh, it’s because the system has some problems. Please tell people to be patient. We are fine.’”
Then, around 3 a.m., SBF finally admitted why withdrawals had been caught.
“He said, ‘We do not have enough money to meet all the withdrawals on the exchange,’” she said. “I just bounced from my bed. I was in shock. I was shaking.”
SBF invited Wang to the company’s “war room,” where she discovered him, Ellison, co-founder Gary Wang and engineering chief Nishad Singh.
Ex-FTX COO Constance Wang discovered the exchange was out of money from a 3 a.m. message from Sam Bankman-Fried in November 2022. Courtesy of Constance Waing
“That was the first time I saw a spreadsheet laying out how much FTX was in the hole. I think $8 billion. And I was shocked. I was like, ‘How? How could this happen?’”
The crash got here at great value to everybody in the FTX crew.
In her ultimate dialog with SBF in the Bahamas, Wang said she requested whether or not he understood what his workers have been going through: being blamed for one thing they knew nothing about, dropping their life financial savings and years of arduous work.
“He reacted quite mildly,” she said. “I remember not being sure he really felt the weight of it, and wondering whether the human cost had ever been part of how he weighed his decisions.”
“Sam’s mistake was that he overestimated his own intelligence,” Li added. “He really was smart. He could spot a lot of opportunities in the market. But the rest of the market wasn’t as easy to fool as he thought, honestly.”
Ellison, who pleaded guilty and testified against SBF, was launched in January after about 14 months behind bars. She now works at Manifund, a San Francisco charity, utilizing the alias “Carol.”
Constance Wang at work in FTX’s Bahamas workplace in 2022. As the crypto market crashed that spring, she says, FTX saved growing. Courtesy of Constance Waing
The collapse left an estimated 9 million prospects and buyers dealing with billions of {dollars} in losses.
FTX’s chapter crew has since clawed back around $16.5 billion to repay prospects at least 118% of their balances, but priced at November 2022 ranges. Then, Bitcoin traded around $16,000 — a fraction of the more than $80,000 it fetches today.
Wang has never been accused of wrongdoing but is aware of people ask: how might the COO not know?
“If people want to hide something from you, they make sure they hide it well.”
She ran FTX’s global growth, opening workplaces in Japan, Singapore and Dubai and factors out she invested large sums of her own money into the exchange and its associated coin. Although her holdings hit 10 figures at their peak, she returned home to Hong Kong with just $80,000.
The Justice Department also investigated her for about a 12 months, Wang said, but she was never charged and not called to testify at SBF’s trial. “I do not possess material information that would help them make the case,” she said. “That’s basically a reflection of how little I know.”
Constance Wang talking for Pacifica, the crypto trading platform she based in 2025. Courtesy of Constance Waing
The trial was particularly arduous for her, though. Reading the coverage for mentions of her identify, she said, every little thing shattered “from the inside out, except my body.” She fell into a depression and even had suicidal ideas, until outdated mates rallied around her and ultimately introduced her out of it.
She has since gone back into business and in 2025 co-founded Pacifica, a crypto trading platform that has made $10 billion in trades in the past month, according to DefiLlama.
“I feel very grateful that I’m not only free, but I’m able to start another company,” she said.
However, she was very shocked Netflix never contracted her to hear her aspect of the story, or even acquired in contact with her, before writing a entire character based around her.
“I searched my mailbox and didn’t discover something from Netflix. I definitely didn’t obtain something about the story, about the script.
“I do not know how I am going to be portrayed, and I am a bit nervous, to be honest with you.”
However, she doesn’t harbor grudges against the people who she helped construct the exchange and her profession with.
“I don’t hate Sam. I don’t hate any of them. I’m just sad and disappointed,” Wang added.
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