Exclusive Interview with Former FTX Executive: The Netflix Series About SBF's Love Story is Absolutely Absurd

Original Title: Ex-FTX boss finds Sam Bankman-Fried 'love story' series on Netflix laughable: 'No f--king way'

Original Author: Vivi Lin, NYTimes

Original Compilation: jk, Odaily Planet Daily

In 2022, the cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed, resulting in billions of dollars in losses for investors and permanently changing the public's perception of digital currency.

Soon after, it was revealed that FTX CEO and effective altruism advocate Sam Bankman-Fried (abbreviated as SBF) had illegally diverted billions of dollars from the exchange to support his hedge fund Alameda Research, which was nominally managed by his ex-girlfriend and colleague Caroline Ellison.

Now, this incident has been adapted into a new Netflix series titled "The Altruists," marketed as "a toxic love story inspired by a true fraud case." However, such an adaptation has shocked and been hard to accept for those who experienced the FTX collapse.

Netflix New Series

Former FTX COO Constance Wang stated that attempting to present this crisis from a love story perspective is absurd.

"SBF's entire goal was to change the world, create impact, and do good. Love, romantic relationships, and family seemed secondary to him."

"As for that kind of 'you and me against the world' romantic plot? No f--king way." Wang said in her first exclusive interview with the New York Post about the collapse of FTX.

Constance is portrayed in the series by actress Madison Hu. However, when a friend showed her the trailer during breakfast, she couldn't even finish watching it.

"I watched about 40 seconds and actually felt physically sick because it made me extremely uncomfortable," she said.

She also bluntly stated that the love-centered plot setting is ridiculous.

"For a long time at the company, we had no idea they were dating, and we didn't even know Sam had the capacity for romance because he was always working," Wang said.

"I have a group chat with a few employees I was closer to. At that time, I was very shocked and asked them: 'Did you know about this?' They replied: 'No, we thought you knew.'"

Constance's FTX Period

"The Altruists" tells the story of SBF, Ellison, and their followers attempting to reform the financial system according to the ideals of effective altruism, ultimately leading to failure. They claimed to hope to use wealth and wisdom to make the world a better place.

However, SBF purchased a $35 million party mansion in the Bahamas and diverted $8 billion of FTX investors' funds to Alameda Research, ultimately leading to the collapse of the entire project. Since U.S. federal law does not allow leniency for someone claiming they will do good in the future, SBF is currently serving a 25-year sentence for fraud and money laundering.

Constance stated that she attended several gatherings hosted by SBF and the effective altruism circle, but she found herself not fitting in with that group. The effective altruism movement is also closely linked to AI company Anthropic and other tech giants.

"They are indeed very smart, discussing topics like math, physics, and biology. If it were a dinner on a Friday or Saturday night, I would prefer to talk about lighter topics. But for them, these are light topics."

"Playing together once or twice is fine, but over time it becomes hard to fit in."

The core team of FTX consisted of about 10 people, who lived in the Bahamas with SBF and Ellison. According to previous reports from CoinDesk, these individuals had at one point 'all formed romantic relationships with each other.'

Ellison, who was also indicted by U.S. federal prosecutors after the FTX collapse, admitted in a now-deleted Tumblr post in 2020 that she had experiences with polyamory.

She wrote at the time: "When I first tried polyamory, I thought it was a complete break from my past traditional views. But to be honest, I now think the only acceptable polyamorous model should be something akin to the 'harem system' of ancient Chinese emperors."

However, Constance stated that she had never witnessed such scandalous scenes.

"To be honest, before I saw the word 'orgy' in news reports, I didn't even know what it meant," she said, "I even specifically Googled it."

On the contrary, she believes "the company was just a bunch of nerds," and most of the gatherings she attended were about playing chess and board games.

It is currently unclear what kind of party scenes Netflix has used in the series. Netflix has not responded to requests for comment. However, Constance believes that based on the content currently available, the producers have clearly made a lot of artistic alterations.

She pointed out that the real SBF could hardly maintain eye contact with others, while the SBF played by Anthony Boyle in the trailer is a confident, socially adept entrepreneur, creating a stark contrast.

"In 2018, when I first met Sam in Singapore, he couldn't look anyone in the eye when talking to them," she recalled, "He would keep staring at the floor while constantly shaking his leg."

The Ellison portrayed by Julia Garner in the trailer appears quite proactive, even somewhat aggressive. But Constance stated that the real Ellison is actually 'gentle' and 'speaks softly.'

"She never comes across as very assertive. If you ask her a question, she will pause for a moment, think about it, and then start to answer."

Quinn Li, a former market manager at FTX who also moved to the Bahamas to work with SBF, also believes that the trailer is "very, very bad."

"It adds too much romance and emotional drama, but in reality, there wasn't that much of it. In fact, everyone was very rational," Li told the New York Post.

"In the trailer, I can't see how smart Sam and Caroline actually are. They look like two silly cats in love."

Constance then recalled the decisive night of the FTX collapse in November 2022.

At that time, Binance founder CZ announced he would sell the FTX platform token FTT, triggering market panic. In the following 72 hours, customers withdrew about $6 billion from FTX.

Constance was in charge of the VIP team serving the exchange's largest trading clients. She stated that the message conveyed to employees from the company's upper management was always to remain calm.

"The internal instruction we received from Sam was: 'Let everyone withdraw, we are fine.'" she said.

Some loyal customers even chose to deposit funds back into FTX.

"No one, including myself, ever doubted what Sam told us because we had a very, very deep trust in him," Constance stated.

However, when customer withdrawals began to fail, the company's explanation remained a technical issue.

"We were told: 'Oh, it's because there was a little problem with the system. Please tell the customers to be patient, we are fine.'"

It wasn't until around 3 a.m. that SBF finally admitted the real reason for the withdrawal blockage.

"He said: 'We don't have enough money to meet all the withdrawal requests from the exchange.'"

Constance recalled: "I jumped out of bed. I was shocked, and my whole body was shaking."

Later, SBF invited Constance to the company's "war room." There, she met SBF, Ellison, co-founder Gary Wang, and engineering head Nishad Singh.

"That was the first time I saw a spreadsheet, which listed how large the funding gap at FTX was. I remember it was about $8 billion."

"I was completely shocked. I was thinking: 'How could this happen? How did this happen?'"

The collapse of FTX also took a heavy toll on the entire team.

Constance recalled that in her last conversation with SBF in the Bahamas, she asked him if he truly understood what the employees were going through: they were being blamed by the outside world for things they were completely unaware of, losing their life savings and the results of years of hard work.

"His reaction was quite flat," she said, "I remember being unsure if he really realized the seriousness of it all, and I couldn't help but wonder if he ever considered the cost of these decisions to people when weighing his own decisions."

Li added: "Sam's mistake was that he overestimated his intelligence."

"He is indeed very smart and able to spot many opportunities in the market. But to be honest, other market participants are not as easily deceived as he imagined."

Ellison pleaded guilty after the collapse of FTX and testified in court accusing SBF. She was released in January this year after serving about 14 months in prison. Currently, she is working at a charity organization called Manifund in San Francisco under the alias "Carol."

The collapse of FTX has left an estimated 9 million customers and investors facing billions of dollars in losses.

Since then, the FTX bankruptcy liquidation team has recovered about $16.5 billion to repay customers at least an amount equivalent to 118% of their account balances.

But the problem is that these balances were calculated based on asset prices from November 2022. At that time, the price of Bitcoin was about $16,000, while now it has exceeded $80,000.

Constance has never been accused of any wrongdoing, but she is also aware that there is always a question from the outside: as the Chief Operating Officer of FTX, how could she possibly be unaware of everything?

In response, she said: "If someone wants to hide something from you, they will definitely make sure to keep it well concealed."

Constance was previously responsible for FTX's global growth business, driving the company to establish offices in Japan, Singapore, and Dubai. She also emphasized that she had invested a significant amount of her personal funds into FTX and its related tokens.

Although her assets peaked at a ten-digit dollar scale, meaning at least $1 billion, by the time she returned to Hong Kong, she had only $80,000 left.

Constance revealed that the U.S. Department of Justice had conducted an investigation into her for about a year, but ultimately did not charge her or require her to testify in SBF's trial.

"I did not possess any substantial information that could help the prosecution build a case." She said, "This basically reflects how little I actually knew at the time."

However, the entire trial process was still extremely painful for her.

She recalled constantly reading trial reports, searching for any mention of her name. During that time, she felt that "everything inside and out was shattered except for her body."

She fell into depression and even had suicidal thoughts. It was not until some old friends reappeared in her life, offering her support, that she finally managed to emerge from that low point.

After that, she returned to the entrepreneurial field, and co-founded the cryptocurrency trading platform Pacifica in 2025.

According to data from DefiLlama, the platform has reached a trading volume of $10 billion in the past month.

"I am very grateful that I not only still have my freedom but also have the opportunity to start a company again." She said.

However, Constance was quite surprised that Netflix never contacted her to learn about her personal experiences before creating a character based on her.

"I specifically searched my email and found no messages from Netflix. Of course, I did not receive any information about the plot or script."

"I don't know how they will shape my character. To be honest, I am a bit nervous about it."

Despite this, Constance stated that she does not harbor resentment towards those who once built FTX and worked hard alongside her.

"I don't hate Sam, nor do I hate any of them."

"I just feel sad and disappointed."