The implosion of FTX was financially ruinous for some employees. Outside the U.S., many staff were paid via direct deposit to their accounts on the cryptocurrency exchange, so when FTX froze customer withdrawals last week, these employees couldn’t access their funds, people familiar with the matter said.
“You have to understand just how devastated the average FTX employee was,” said Nathaniel Whittemore, a former FTX marketing specialist who quit last week. “Not only did it seem they might be out of job, but they also were potentially facing the total loss of their savings. All I could think of was rage and white-hot anger.”
It was also common for employees to hold FTX equity or get part of their pay in the exchange’s FTT tokens, the people said. Last fall, Mr. Bankman-Fried offered employees the opportunity to buy shares in FTX at a 50% discount to what venture capitalists had paid in a recent funding round, the people said. Now, that equity is worthless and the price of FTT has crashed 90% since the start of November.
Source: FTX’s Collapse Leaves Employees Sick With Anger – WSJ
