FTX staff wrote ‘oops’ on a spreadsheet which showed it owed $20billion five months before it collapsed.
A court in New York heard that Sam Bankman-Fried, the boss of the failed crypto exchange, ordered his staff to prepare the document in July 2022 as investors demanded their money back.
Crypto prices had tumbled and the industry was spooked, so Bankman-Fried wanted a full accounting of FTX’s debts.
Next to an entry for ‘expenses’ which was -$172million, one of the senior staff wrote: ‘Oops, this sounds like not a thing we should be counting?’
The spreadsheet emerged during the testimony of FTX co-founder Gary Wang, 31, one of the star witnesses for the prosecution which claims that Bankman-Fried cheated customers out of $10billion