1.Gary Wang — Direct/Cross (Part 2)
2,576 linesUNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK ------------------------------x UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, v. 22 CR 673 (LAK) SAMUEL BANKMAN-FRIED, Defendant. Trial
New York, N.Y. October 6, 2023 9:35 a.m. Before: HON. LEWIS A. KAPLAN, District Judge APPEARANCES DAMIAN WILLIAMS United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York BY: DANIELLE R. SASSOON NICOLAS ROOS DANIELLE KUDLA SAMUEL RAYMOND THANE REHN Assistant United States Attorneys COHEN & GRESSER, LLP Attorneys for Defendant BY: MARK S. COHEN CHRISTIAN R. EVERDELL SRI K. KUEHNLENZ DAVID F. LISNER Also Present: Luke Booth, FBI Kristin Allain, FBI Arjun Ahuja, USAO Paralegal Specialist Grant Bianco, USAO Paralegal Specialist
(In open court; jury not present)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Good morning, all.
MR. ROOS: Good morning, Judge. We have one matter. We're going to be playing one recording that we have a transcript for. We have in individual binders for each of the jurors, if that's okay with your Honor.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes. I think you brought that up last night.
MR. COHEN: Your Honor, just very quickly, one of the jurors rode in the elevator with one of my colleagues today. Can your Honor give the standing instruction. Obviously they didn't talk up the way, but I think just to let the jury know.
JUDGE KAPLAN: I will. Thank you.
MR. COHEN: No.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Boy, you're being careful.
MR. COHEN: No objection.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Life is so much easier when lawyers treat each other with appropriate respect and, dare I say, affection.
JUDGE KAPLAN: That's a good idea. Thank you.
(Jury present)
COURT CLERK: Please be seated, everyone.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Good morning, folks. Before we get started, let me just say something that I normally say, perhaps may have said already. It goes without saying that none of you should have any contact with any of the lawyers or the witnesses whatever, and if you should happen to find yourself riding in an elevator or something like that with somebody else involved in the case, obviously you shouldn't speak to one another, and nobody should be offended if somebody who you would normally say good morning to doesn't say good morning to you, and they will understand if you don't say good morning to them. Just avoid any possibility of somebody thinking that something inappropriate got said by not saying anything.
Okay. Let's go. Mr. Wang, you're still under oath. Mr. Roos, you may proceed when you're ready.
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. ROOS:
MR. ROOS: Mr. Wang, yesterday you said that there were certain advantages or privileges that Alameda had. Where did those advantages or privileges exist?
GARY WANG: In the computer code that was powering FTX.
GARY WANG: The computer code is a set of instructions that are given to computers so that the computers know what to do. So computer code is——it's text, so it's human readable, and it gets taken by a computer or by a server somewhere and it runs those instructions to do whatever it is that you're telling them to do.
MR. ROOS: And when it comes to a website like FTX, are there different parts of the computer code?
GARY WANG: So there's the front-end code that runs on your computer or——that runs on your computer or on your phone when you access a website, and then there is the back-end code, which runs on the server and keeps track of the data in the system and runs all the——runs all the trading, all the auto-matching, all the back-end processing.
MR. ROOS: Can you give us an example of a website we might be familiar with that has a front-end and back-end computer code.
GARY WANG: So one example is Google.com. So when you go on Google, either on your phone or on your computer, you see, you know, you see this——you see this front page, you see the Google logo, you see a search box, you see a search button, and so that's all powered by the front-end code, so that code tells——that code tells your computer, you know, where to draw the logo, where to put the text box and all that stuff. And then when you type something in and click the search button, that gets sent over to the Google back end, which is Google's back-end code, which is running on——in Google's data center somewhere, and there the back-end code then takes——takes your search inquiry and looks up the results, and from——from some giant database it has of all the web pages it knows about, and then sends that back over to your computer, and that's the back-end portion of that.
GARY WANG: The front end.
GARY WANG: So it determines——so it controls what images show up, what text shows up, how they're formatted, and where they appear on the page relative to each other.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It's a screenshot of the wallet page on FTX.
MR. EVERDELL: No objection.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Received.
(Government's Exhibit 1563 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: You may.
BY MR. ROOS:
GARY WANG: So this is a screenshot of the wallet page on FTX.
GARY WANG: So the——the front-end code controls the various text formatting of the page and its tables, and the back-end code keeps——keeps track of what——the back-end code keeps——and the database keeps track of what balances you have, what——what coins, what coins you have, how much of each you have, and then the back end sends it over to the front end, which then is responsible for formatting it and displaying it on the page.
MR. ROOS: Let me just break your answer down a little bit.
So starting at the top left corner of the page, do you see where it says Wallet?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So that refers to the approximate total value in US dollars of——of the balances of your accounts.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So the——the back-end code keeps track of what your balances are and what the value of each of those balances is, and then it adds them up and it sends it over to the front end, which then displays the number.
MR. ROOS: Do you see lower on the screen, below the word Balances, it lists some little coin icons? Do you see that there?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So the back end has——in the database keeps track of which coins you have and how much of each coin you have, and it also knows how——and it also keeps track of approximately how much, what the value of each coin that you have is. And then it takes those numbers and sends them over to the front end, which then displays these numbers.
MR. ROOS: So when a customer looked at a balance in their account here, what were the balances supposed to represent?
GARY WANG: They——it represents what coins——what tokens and what——what coins and how much of each they have in their accounts.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So in the front-end code, it controls what happens when you click those two buttons, so either Deposit button or the Withdrawal button. It will pop up a dialogue asking you how much you want——say, for example, for the Withdrawal button, it asks you how much, you know, how much you want to withdraw and to where. Then when you type something in, it sends out over to the back, you can——
GARY WANG: So the back end of FTX, so it——it's——there's the database, which keeps track of all the accounts and how much is in each account, and also keeps track of all the transactions that happen on FTX, so all the deposits, all the withdrawals, all the trades, all the trading that happens, and all the——all the fees from those trades, and then the back end is also responsible for taking orders that people place and matching them against each other so that trades happen. It's also responsible for managing deposits and withdrawals, and it's——and it's also responsible for keeping track of risks and——and positions and how much——and what happens when you——your accounts gets liquidated and all that, and things like that.
MR. ROOS: Okay. Mr. Bianco, we can take down this exhibit.
And the government now offers Government Exhibit 2002, which is a stipulation, and pursuant to that stipulation, the government offers Exhibit 1731.
JUDGE KAPLAN: They are received.
(Government's Exhibits 2002 and 1731 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes, sir.
BY MR. ROOS:
GARY WANG: This is a screenshot of a query to the FTX database and the results from that query.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: So just in terms of this portion of the back-end database, what kind of information does it provide?
GARY WANG: So this is the accounts table in the database, so it's——which keeps track of the——of all the accounts on——accounts and system accounts on FTX, so it has——so going to the columns, it has an ID, it has the user name of the accounts, it has a user ID, and then it has things like what fees that account pays, various settings——and various settings related to the account.
MR. ROOS: So since this is small to read, I'm going to ask Mr. Bianco to zoom in on each part. So Mr. Bianco, why don't we just zoom in on the area of ID, User Name, and User ID columns. And just so we can see the headings, also.
Thank you.
GARY WANG: So ID is a numeric ID associated with these accounts; User Name is typically the email of the account; and then User ID is——so accounts might——so users might have accounts and they might have subaccounts, and the User ID ties accounts and subaccounts together.
MR. ROOS: Okay. Then a few columns over do you see where it indicates, it says——it has the words Fee in two columns?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So Maker Fee and Taker Fee are the fees that the account pays for——for trades that it does.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: That refers to whether or not the account is currently being liquidated.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It refers to the size of the account's line of credit.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It refers to whether or not the account is allowed to withdraw part of its line of credit.
MR. ROOS: And so on the Borrow line, the Line of Credit line, all these numbers are 0 except for one of them. What does 0 mean?
GARY WANG: That means that the account does not have a line of credit.
GARY WANG: That means it has a line of credit of 1 dollar.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Of 1 dollar?
GARY WANG: Yes.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Thank you.
MR. ROOS: And then the Can below Borrow column, next to it has nothing checked. What does that mean?
GARY WANG: That means that these accounts are not allowed to withdraw their line of credit.
GARY WANG: It refers to whether or not the account is allowed to have a negative balance. So by——as——whether or not the account is allowed to transfer or withdraw funds such that it would cause it to have a negative balance.
GARY WANG: So a balance of less than 0.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So that——that means that the account would be——is transferring/withdrawing more than it has. So it would be borrowing from the exchange at this point.
MR. ROOS: So none of these have "Allow Negative" checked. What happens if "Allow Negative" is checked?
GARY WANG: So it's——normally you can't withdraw more than what you have in your account, but if "Allow Negative" is checked, that means that you are allowed to withdraw more than what you have in the account.
MR. ROOS: So this is all the back end, you said. What does this back-end database do for the front end of the website?
GARY WANG: So the data at the back end is used to populate what shows up in the front end of the website.
MR. ROOS: So when we were looking at that page with the account balances, is that information all stored in this back-end database?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: All right. We can take this down.
And pursuant to Government Exhibit 2002, which is a stipulation, the government offers Exhibit 1732.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Received.
(Government's Exhibit 1732 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: You may.
BY MR. ROOS:
GARY WANG: So this is a fills table in that database.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So it contains records of all the trades that happened on FTX.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So the——on the front end there's a page that displays all your trading activity, and the data for that comes from this table. And also the——and also the——your balances ultimately come as a result of adding up the entries in this table, amongst other things.
GARY WANG: So ID is a unique identifier for the trades that happen, so each trade has a unique ID. And an account ID is which account did the trade. So each account——each account has an ID, and in this, in the fills table here, they're saying for each trade that happened, which account did the trade.
MR. ROOS: And then a little bit ways over, closer to the right side of the screen, it says Side. Do you see that?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Refers to whether, this trade, whether the account is buying or selling.
GARY WANG: That's the price that the trade happened at.
GARY WANG: It's the size of the trade, so how much they bought or how much they sold.
MR. ROOS: And then in the FTX database that we're looking at, is there a record of every purchase and sale of cryptocurrency on the site?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
JUDGE KAPLAN: I'm sorry. Before we get to that, Mr. Wang, I would imagine that somewhere on each line here it perhaps indicates what was bought and sold, yes?
GARY WANG: Yes.
JUDGE KAPLAN: And where is that?
GARY WANG: So that's in the Market ID column, which identifies which market the trade happened in, and each market——each market then, in the markets table, then has——has what two things are traded on that market.
JUDGE KAPLAN: So for example, in the first line, the entry under Market ID, 3104, that corresponds to a particular type of asset that was bought or sold, yes?
GARY WANG: Yes. Well, so it's——well, so it's——for example——I don't remember which that exactly is. For example, there's a Bitcoin with a USD market, that's one market, and then there's, say, a Bitcoin with an Ethereum market, and there's an Ethereum USD market, and those would be three different markets.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Okay. And the Price column expresses the price in what units?
GARY WANG: So it depends on——it depends on which market it is. So usually for a market——so each market has a base currency and a quote currency, so for example, for a BTC with USD, Bitcoin would be the base currency and USD would be the quote currency, and that case, the size is expressed in——would be expressed in Bitcoin, in the base currency.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Okay. Thank you.
Go ahead, Mr. Roos.
BY MR. ROOS:
MR. ROOS: Just to follow up to make sure we understand your question, when you were saying BTC, what were you referring to?
GARY WANG: Bitcoin.
GARY WANG: US dollars.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It had account ID 9.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Info@AlamedaResearch.com.
MR. ROOS: At the beginning of your testimony you said Alameda had special advantages in the computer code. Can you describe what those special privileges were, and then I want to go through each of them.
GARY WANG: Yes. So first, it had the——it had the "Allow Negative" ability, which allowed it to transfer or withdraw funds beyond what it actually had in its account and——and doing so would have the account become——and doing so even when this account had a negative balance, or even if that would cause the account to have a negative balance. So that's one.
Two——two, it had a very large line of credit, which allowed it to put on large positions and large orders even when it didn't have——did not have the collateral in its account.
And three, it had the ability to place orders slightly faster than other accounts.
And four, when the customers deposit US dollars into——into FTX, those dollars were——they were directed to——first deposited into Alameda bank account.
MR. ROOS: I want to focus on the first two in particular, the ability to go negative and make unlimited withdrawals and the large line of credit, okay? I'm going to ask you a few general questions about both of them, okay?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: No.
MR. ROOS: As a result of those special advantages, was Alameda treated the same or differently as other FTX customers on the exchange?
GARY WANG: Differently.
MR. ROOS: What did Alameda do as a result of having the ability to have a negative account balance and make unlimited withdrawals?
GARY WANG: It withdrew more funds than it had on the exchange.
GARY WANG: At the time that FTX declared bankruptcy, Alameda had——was borrowing $8 billion from the exchange.
MR. ROOS: And when you say it was withdrawing $8 billion from the exchange, do you mean in cryptocurrency or fiat or both?
GARY WANG: A combination.
MR. ROOS: Okay. Where did the money come from for Alameda Research to——or what money was Alameda withdrawing when it withdrew money in excess or below its balance?
GARY WANG: It was money from customers.
MR. ROOS: All right. I'm not sure my question was clear, so I'll ask it again.
When Alameda withdrew money below its 0 balance line, so when it withdrew to a balance that was negative, whose money did it withdraw?
GARY WANG: Money belonging to other customers of FTX.
MR. ROOS: All right. So let's dig in a little bit on that first special advantage.
At a general level, and taking a technical sort of perspective, how did Alameda Research have that special privilege, the ability to go negative?
GARY WANG: So there's the——there's——there's computer code that specifies what——that creates a "Allow Negative" column in the database and specifies what happens when the account has that feature; and second, that feature was then turned on for Alameda.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Here it's the second column from the right.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Sam had asked Nishad and I to add the ability to——to pay for various FTX-related expenses from Alameda's accounts and from a few other bookkeeping accounts on FTX.
GARY WANG: This was in July 2019.
GARY WANG: This was a few months after starting the exchange.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: What, if anything, did the defendant say about why Alameda needed the ability to have a negative account balance?
GARY WANG: So we wanted to——so Sam said that he wanted to pay for some——pay for certain FTT-related expenses from Alameda's accounts.
GARY WANG: It's cryptocurrency that was——that we created when FTX was founded, sort of to act as a sort of equity in FTX.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Okay. We'll come back to that.
Over time, was the use of this ability to have an account balance go negative used only by Alameda for that purpose——that is, the FTT expenses?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It was also used by Alameda for trading.
GARY WANG: To withdraw from FTX and send it other exchanges to use for their trading activities.
MR. ROOS: And so did this special advantage——that is, the ability to have a negative account balance——allow Alameda to make unlimited withdrawals off of the FTX exchange?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: As a result of that special advantage, could Alameda make unlimited withdrawals from the exchange even when its account balance was below zero?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: And so if Alameda's account balance was zero or negative, for example, in Bitcoin, and it used its special advantage to withdraw Bitcoin, whose Bitcoin would it be withdrawing?
GARY WANG: From customers——it would be withdrawing customers' Bitcoin.
MR. ROOS: So when Alameda withdrew money from the exchange while it had a negative balance overall, whose money was it withdrawing?
MR. EVERDELL: Objection. Asked and answered.
MR. ROOS: It's a different question. I asked first Bitcoin-specific and then the general question.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Overruled.
MR. ROOS: I'll ask you again: When Alameda withdrew money from the exchange while it had a negative balance, whose money was it withdrawing?
GARY WANG: So I——either FTX's own money or money from customers——was withdrawing money from customers.
GARY WANG: The money FTX earned from trading fees from customers.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: From customers.
MR. ROOS: Pursuant to a stipulation, 2002, which is in evidence, the government offers Exhibit 617.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Received.
(Government's Exhibit 617 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes.
BY MR. ROOS:
GARY WANG: So this is a screenshot of a record of a particular change that was made to FTX's code.
MR. ROOS: So this is the first piece of the computer code that we're looking at. So I want to ask you a few questions just to sort of help orient us in how we read this, okay?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: So tell us a little bit about the language here. What does it mean and how does it work?
GARY WANG: So the Commit refers to a particular change that was made to FTX's code base.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: And then there is a name for the——there's a title for the change and then there's a description of the change.
GARY WANG: So right below Commit, where it says OTC Trades and Transfers Through Special Accounts.
MR. ROOS: Okay. And then lower, there's some writing in a green box. What is that a reference to?
GARY WANG: So the——the green refers to lines that were added to the code base as a result of this change.
GARY WANG: The red portions with the minus sign in front are lines that were removed from the code base as a result of the change.
GARY WANG: Those were lines that were unchanged, that were not changed.
MR. ROOS: So some of these things, you know, just looking at, for instance, line 13, revision equals and a number, those don't look like sentences to me. What is this?
GARY WANG: So this——so this particular file is for a change, a change to the——the columns in the database, and that particular revision number is a previous version of the data schema for the database.
GARY WANG: It's written in Python.
MR. ROOS: Okay. Now let's focus in on this particular portion of the code that's in lines 1 through 31, so the green box here. And what does this show? What is this addition?
GARY WANG: So this is adding two columns to the accounts table in the FTX database. It's adding the "Allow Negative" column and it's adding the "Can Trade Futures" column.
MR. ROOS: So just focusing on the "Allow Negative" addition, does this mean that any particular account can have a negative balance?
GARY WANG: No. Just adding the ability for an account to be marked as being——as having the "Allow Negative" flag, but it doesn't have to be added to any particular account.
GARY WANG: The "Allow Negative" column from that earlier screenshot.
MR. ROOS: So the one where it listed all the customer accounts and then it had a column Allow_Negative?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Nishad did.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: He was another developer at the——he was another developer at the company, and eventually he——he was the engineering manager.
GARY WANG: This was July 31, 2019.
MR. ROOS: And this adds the column, but to give an account this "Allow Negative" feature, what needs to happen?
GARY WANG: Someone needs to go into the database and actually enable it for a particular account.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: He——Sam asked for some page on the website where employees of the company could use to pay for various expenses related to FTX, and part of that page is specifying which accounts those expenses should be paid out of, and he wanted those expenses, the expense payments to happen even if those accounts did not necessarily at the time have the——have the balances to pay for those expenses since the accounts——since most of those were used for bookkeeping purposes.
MR. ROOS: Okay. Now did Alameda Research's account on ftx.com ever have this particular "Allow Negative" feature turned on in that column?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It happened on the same day.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: So why don't we take down this exhibit.
And the government offers——pursuant to stipulation marked as Exhibit 2002, the government offers Exhibit 607.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Received.
(Government's Exhibit 607 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: You may.
MR. ROOS: Mr. Bianco, maybe we could just zoom in a little bit, so we can focus in on the top of this.
Thank you.
BY MR. ROOS:
GARY WANG: So this is a screenshot from GitHub, which is where the FTX code base was stored, and it allowed for commenting on various changes, and this is a comment on a particular change.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: So maybe, Mr. Bianco, we could just zoom in on "Nishad Singh commented" and the white box below it.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: So let's just start with sort of the information at the top of it. NishadSingh1, is that a user name?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Nishad's user name.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: I looked at the code change when it happened.
GARY WANG: He did not look at it, but he was——we told him——he asked us to do it and then we told him we did it.
MR. ROOS: Now this comment says, "And we set Allow Negative equals true for," and it lists a bunch of accounts. Let me just stop there. When it says "we set Allow Negative equals true," what does that mean?
GARY WANG: So it means that prior to or as part of making the change, he went into the database and set the "Allow Negative" column to true for a particular——a particular set of accounts.
MR. ROOS: So for this set of accounts, I want to ask you about a few of them. It lists I think——let's see, one, two, three, four, five——six accounts; is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: That's the main AlamedaResearch.com trading account.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: The info@Alameda off-market FTT subaccounts is the account that Alameda was using to host some of its FTTs.
GARY WANG: Those are the account IDs of those accounts and subaccounts.
MR. ROOS: The next one here is cottonwoodtrading@gmail off-market FTT subaccount, and has a number. What's that account?
GARY WANG: That's a——that's another Alameda account.
MR. ROOS: Okay. So then there are two accounts that I didn't ask you about. Are those customer accounts?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: They're bookkeeping accounts.
MR. ROOS: Were there any other customer accounts besides Alameda's accounts that were given this "Allow Negative" feature at the time it was created?
GARY WANG: No.
MR. ROOS: From July 31, 2019, which is the date here, until the end of FTX, did Alameda's main account and certain subaccounts have that "Allow Negative" feature turned on?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Not for those accounts.
MR. ROOS: We can take this exhibit down.
Pursuant to the stipulation that's in evidence as Government Exhibit 2002, the government offers Exhibit 643.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Received.
(Government's Exhibit 643 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes.
BY MR. ROOS:
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It's a database query for Alameda's accounts and the results from that query.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Here it's filtering for accounts data in the——data——the accounts or subaccounts in Alameda's accounts.
MR. ROOS: Now the screenshot of the database here shows 24 accounts listed. Were there more than this, if you were to scroll down?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Okay. And Mr. Bianco, could you highlight the second to last or zoom in on the second to——I'm sorry, not the second to last——the "Allow Negative" column.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: So in practical terms what did setting "Allow Negative" to checkmark or true mean for those accounts?
GARY WANG: It means that those accounts did not have a limit on how much they could withdraw or transfer.
MR. ROOS: At any time were any other customers of FTX given the ability to have a negative balance?
GARY WANG: No.
MR. ROOS: Were you aware that——withdrawn.
Did you have any conversations with the defendant about adding this to these Alameda accounts?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So we discussed——so, I mean, Sam told me to——a few——on a few instances. Initially it was for Alameda Research main account was one for paying FTT-related expenses and was——
(The reporter interrupted for clarification)
GARY WANG: A. So one was for paying various expenses, and two was for doing conversion between US dollars and USD to stablecoin, which involved——which——which involved tokens from the exchange, sending them to the bank and converting that to dollars into the bank account, or reverse for the other direction.
So that was initially. And then later on, for other subaccounts for part one, it was——it was to be backed up.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: We'll come back to those. Before we do that, I want to ask you about what sort of special abilities having this "Allow Negative" box gave Alameda, okay?
GARY WANG: Yup.
MR. ROOS: All right. Why don't we take this down.
And Mr. Bianco, can you please publish Government Exhibit 617, which is in evidence.
MR. ROOS: And Mr. Wang, this is the piece of the code we looked at earlier that added the "Allow Negative" column, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Okay. So why don't we scroll down lower in this code about halfway to the gray heading that says "\Wallet\Balances." Do you see that?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So this is part of the code for controlling whether or not a transfer or withdrawal from the exchange is allowed. So when the user requests to transfer funds to another account or when the user requests to withdraw some funds from the exchange, this code gets run to——as part of the process for considering whether or not that request is allowed to get processed.
MR. ROOS: Let's just break this down in simple terms.
Actually, let me use an example. So let's start with a normal customer, regular customer, and if that account——and the normal customer account without "Allow Negative." What happens whenever a person wants to make a withdrawal?
GARY WANG: So after——on the front end, after they——after they go through, after they click the Withdraw button and send the request to the back end, the back end, as part of the process, seeing the request, runs this code, which checks whether or not the account has enough balances in it to allow the withdrawal to go through.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It means that as part of——it was added as——to the code as part of this change.
GARY WANG: So it's saying that before checking whether or not the accounts would become negative as a result of the withdrawal, first check whether or not the account has the "Allow Negative" flag checked, and if it——and only do the balance check if the account does not have the "Allow Negative" flag check.
MR. ROOS: So in practical terms, if Alameda had the "Allow Negative" flag checked, would it check the balances?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: No.
MR. ROOS: You can take this down.
Pursuant to a stipulation already in evidence, 2002, the government offers Exhibit 611.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Received.
(Government's Exhibit 611 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes.
MR. ROOS: And Mr. Bianco, if we could zoom in from the word Commit down through the first section.
BY MR. ROOS:
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: This is part of the code for determining whether or not an account should be liquidated or not.
MR. ROOS: Okay. So before I ask you what this does, let me ask you: At a high level, what is liquidating account?
GARY WANG: So when a——when an account opens a position and as part of that position they need to borrow funds, the——if the market moves against that position, their account must lose value, and at some point their account might lose so much value that it's in danger of having——of going negative, of having——it's in danger of having nothing, of losing so much value that it would have nothing in it, would start having negative balances, and before that happens, FTX liquidates the account so it——it closes the position to prevent the account from becoming negative.
GARY WANG: So let's say someone deposits a hundred dollars into their FTX account and then uses it to open a $1,000 Bitcoin position. And let's say they bought——they're going long, so they bought the Bitcoin position. And then let's say the price of Bitcoin starts falling, and, you know, as the price of Bitcoin falls, their account starts losing——the account starts becoming worth less and less. So let's say if they have a $1,000 Bitcoin position and Bitcoin goes down 1 percent, then now their account only has $90 in it, and if Bitcoin goes down another percent, then now their account only has $80 in it, and if this keeps happening, at some point their account——at some point the $100 they deposited into their account is all gone and now the account might become negative as a result of the price of Bitcoin falling.
MR. ROOS: Okay. So just to break that down, first of all, you're talking about someone buying a future?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: And you're describing a scenario where somebody has gone long on Bitcoins, they've made a bet on Bitcoin; is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: And what happens then as the price of Bitcoin starts dropping on that bet, so it goes the opposite way?
GARY WANG: It means that their account starts losing value.
GARY WANG: Well, because when——because they only——they only deposited a hundred dollars but they're buying a $1,000 Bitcoin position, so——and because the Bitcoin future means that it's only worth how much——however much Bitcoin is worth, and so as the price of Bitcoin falls, their position also loses value.
MR. ROOS: And so you described a situation where the price of Bitcoin keeps falling so the account keeps losing value. What then does the liquidation process do?
GARY WANG: So the liquidation process kicks in before the account loses all of its value, and at that——ideally, before it loses all its value. And the liquidation process sells off their position and the collateral to a market maker; either to a market maker or just sells it on the market.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So it prevents the account from becoming negative, because if the account went negative, then that would mean that FTX would be on the hook for the money, so it was to protect FTX and the other customers from losing money.
GARY WANG: So this——there's code for detecting how large the——how large account's positions are and how much collateral they had, and when that——when the amount that it——of value it has in the account is too small relative to how much the account's positions are, at that point it——it——it decides that the account is too risky and that it needs to liquidate the account.
MR. ROOS: Let me ask you just a few follow-up questions on that liquidation detection.
So are there people who are out there just looking for accounts to liquidate?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: So it's an automated process, so there's computer codes running all the time that looks through every account at FTX and checks whether or not it's——the account is too risky or not.
GARY WANG: So it takes about 30 seconds to detect that an account needs to be liquidated, and then how long it takes to liquidate the actual account depends on how large the actual account is. So for a very small account, it just happens, it could happen instantly, and for larger accounts, it might take a few seconds or a few minutes.
(Continued on next page)
MR. ROOS: Is it possible that an account could just have a large negative balance sitting out there without being liquidated?
GARY WANG: Not generally, not for normal customers.
GARY WANG: No. Unless -- not for any long period of time.
MR. ROOS: You were just alluding to it. When or what does the computer code say about when to liquidate a normal customer?
GARY WANG: It compares how much value the account has against how large its positions are. So it takes the ratio of the size of its positions to the size of its collateral, and if that ratio it falls below a certain threshold, the account is put into liquidation mode.
MR. EVERDELL: Objection, your Honor. Use of the word norm.
JUDGE KAPLAN: I didn't hear what Mr. Everdell said.
MR. EVERDELL: My objection is to use of the word normal customer.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Overruled.
GARY WANG: OK.
GARY WANG: For accounts that have allow negative turned on, it's saying that regardless of what this computation would normally result in, ignore that result and this market has not been liquidated.
MR. ROOS: For which customer accounts had the allow negative turned on and therefore would not be liquidated?
GARY WANG: For customers, it's Alameda's accounts.
MR. ROOS: Did you speak to the defendant about not having Alameda Research's account be liquidated?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: He told me a few items to make sure that Alameda's account is never liquidated on FTX.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Objection.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Overruled. A. Yes.
JUDGE KAPLAN: It's quite clear from the previous answer.
MR. ROOS: In terms of that conversation or conversations you had with them, did this code addition have anything to do with this?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: This code addition was the result of one of those conversations.
MR. ROOS: Just to be clear, did the topic of Alameda not being liquidated come up once or more than once with the defendant?
GARY WANG: More than once.
GARY WANG: It would cause them to lose money because liquidation might not happen at a good price.
MR. ROOS: Put it all together for us. When Alameda Research was given the allow-negative feature in the code, what did it mean for this account?
GARY WANG: It means that regardless of what the accounts balance is or positions are, it can never be liquidated.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: No.
MR. EVERDELL: Objection.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Sustained as to form.
GARY WANG: Someone would need to manually do something to close it.
MR. ROOS: Did there come a time in late 2019 when you heard the defendant talk about Alameda Research having a negative balance?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So at the time FTX and Alameda were in the same office, and someone -- a trader from Alameda came up to Sam's desk and asked him whether it's fine for Alameda to continue withdrawing from FTX, and Sam said that as long as how much Alameda has withdrawn from FTX is less than what FTX total trading revenue was at the time, then it's fine for Alameda to keep withdrawing from FTX.
MR. ROOS: Let me ask you a few follow-up questions on that.
First, what was the defendant's role with Alameda, if any, at the time?
GARY WANG: He was the CEO of Alameda.
MR. ROOS: You said he said that Alameda could keep withdrawing as long as they didn't go more negative than FTX's revenue?
MR. EVERDELL: Objection.
GARY WANG: Around 50 to a hundred million dollars at the time.
MR. ROOS: Putting that together, how much did the defendant say, in other words, that Alameda could withdraw?
GARY WANG: That it could withdraw until its account became negative by more than 50 to a hundred million dollars.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Did you say million or billion?
GARY WANG: Million with an M.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Thank you.
MR. ROOS: What would it have meant if Alameda Research's account had a negative balance that was more negative than 50 or a hundred million?
GARY WANG: That would mean that it's taking customers' deposits.
GARY WANG: I was sitting near Sam's desk when it happened.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: So at the very end of 2019 or early 2020, I did a database query to check what Alameda's balances were at the time. When I checked, it was negative by more than what FTX's trading revenue was at the time.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: What was the implication of Alameda having a negative balance in excess of FTX's revenue?
GARY WANG: It means that Alameda was taking customers' money.
GARY WANG: I was surprised because it didn't line up with what I heard Sam say earlier, so I went to Sam to talk to him about this.
GARY WANG: He asked me, when I was doing this calculation, if I was including the value of Alameda's FTT, which was held in a separate account. He asked me if I was also including that FTT.
MR. ROOS: To break this down a little bit, you said Alameda's account was negative in excess of revenue. What was FTX's revenue at the time?
GARY WANG: It was around $150 million.
GARY WANG: It was more than that. It was more than that. I think it was around 200 million.
MR. ROOS: When you told the defendant that Alameda had a negative balance, what did he tell you to include in the balance calculation?
GARY WANG: He asked me to include the value of all of Alameda's accounts on FTX and include the value of the FTT that was in those accounts.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It was created by FTX when FTX was founded.
GARY WANG: Sam and I.
GARY WANG: Alameda did.
GARY WANG: It was worth a few dollars.
MR. ROOS: You said Alameda owned most of this cryptocurrency that you created. What would have happened if you sold it?
GARY WANG: If we sold it all at once, it would cause the price of FTT to drop by large amounts.
GARY WANG: Because there is not enough people who would want to buy all of the FTT that is being sold all at once at the price it was currently trading at, so it would cause the price to go down until there was enough people who want to buy it.
MR. ROOS: You said earlier this was sort of like FTX's stock. Using the analogy of the stock, can you explain how the price would drop?
GARY WANG: So if there is not enough people who want to buy a stock at a particular price, then if a company issues a bunch of stock all at once and tries to sell it and it is not the people who want to buy the stock at the price it's trading at, it would cause the price of the stock to go down.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: What, if any, problems were there with including all the FTT in that balance calculation?
GARY WANG: There were two problems. One is that if the FTT was all sold to cover the amount of -- that Alameda was withdrawing, it would cause the price of FTT to fall by a large amount and it might not be enough to cover how much Alameda was withdrawing.
And, two, the other problem with that, Alameda was withdrawing U.S. dollars and other cryptocurrency and not FTT.
MR. ROOS: Where were you when you had this conversation about Alameda's negative balance with the defendant?
GARY WANG: In Hong Kong, in the FTX and Alameda office.
GARY WANG: It's a picture of Sam at his desk.
GARY WANG: In Hong Kong.
MR. EVERDELL: No objection.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Received.
(Government Exhibit 1475 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Mr. Wang, was this where the defendant was when you talked to him about Alameda's negative balance?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Well, I wasn't sure if it was -- which interpretation was correct, and I trusted his judgment.
MR. ROOS: Besides the two conversations you have described to us, did the fact that Alameda had allow negative turned on come up other times with the defendant?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Also later.
MR. ROOS: Besides the two conversations you just mentioned to us, did the fact that Alameda had a negative balance come up on other occasions with the defendant?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: A few times.
MR. ROOS: Now, did there come a time when Alameda's account balance on FTX was so negative that it remained negative even with the FTT included?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Was there ever a time when Alameda's account balance in FTX was so negative that even counting FTT in FTX's revenue, it was still negative?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: In that situation, when Alameda's balances were so negative, they were more negative than revenue and FTT, where did that money come from?
GARY WANG: From customers.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Because the money belonged to customers and the customers did not give us permission to use them for other things.
MR. ROOS: We will come back to this.
But I want to focus on the second special privilege you mentioned, the line of credit. OK?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yup.
MR. ROOS: For a customer like that, if the customer wants to borrow money on an FTX, what does he or she need to do?
GARY WANG: They need to first deposit collateral onto FTX.
GARY WANG: Usually, from the spot-margin system.
GARY WANG: It's a system where people can either lend out their funds and specify some interest rate and then they can earn some interest rate while lending off the funds, and other customers can then borrow those funds to use for trading either by short selling or by withdrawing.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: They need to first enable it, a setting in their accounts.
GARY WANG: There is a settings page where there is a button that they can click to enable spot-margin trading, and then to access another fund there is another page where you specify how much funds you want to lend out and at what interest rates.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It's a screenshot of the margin settings page on FTX.
MR. EVERDELL: No objection.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Received.
(Government Exhibit 596 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Mr. Wang, now that the jury can see this I am going to ask you a few overview questions about it. Where did this page exist on the website?
GARY WANG: It's in the settings page.
GARY WANG: The margin settings page for the accounts on FTX.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It means that sport margin is currently not enabled for the account.
GARY WANG: They need to click the enable spot margin and trading button.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Because they are not giving permission to do so.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Leverage is specifying what maximum margin they should allow themselves to use on the platform. So, for example, 10X leverage would mean that if they deposit one dollar, they can open a 10-dollar position either via -- either via buying or selling a future or by short selling a spot token. And then collateral is specifying the set of tokens on FTX that can be used as collateral.
MR. ROOS: If someone wants to take a margin loan or give a margin loan, what do they need to do on this page?
GARY WANG: They need to click the enable spot-margin trading button.
MR. ROOS: Do customers who want to take a margin loan, can they do that without clicking spot margin enabled?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So it's funds that you deposit into your account which have some value that you can then use to open positions or borrow funds. If your account starts losings value, that gets taken out from your collateral.
MR. ROOS: How much collateral does a customer need to deposit to take a margin loan? Maybe we can just use the example of Bitcoin.
GARY WANG: If they are not withdrawing the Bitcoin, if they are only selling the Bitcoin short, the platform then to say sell $10 of Bitcoin, then you first have to deposit one dollar of collateral.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: If I have like a billion dollars in a bank account somewhere, can I count that as collateral?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: One, because FTX system doesn't know about what money you have that's not on FTX and, two, because in the event that your account starts losing value or your account needs to be liquidated, there is no way for the FTX system to get at the money that's not sitting on FTX.
GARY WANG: Because we wanted liquidations to happen automatically. So, as a result, we -- there is no way for it to take into account -- there is no way for it to take into account assets that aren't actually on the platform itself.
MR. ROOS: When a customer borrows through the spot-margin program, who does he or she borrow from?
GARY WANG: From other customers who have agreed to lend out their funds.
MR. ROOS: By doing that, does a customer agree that under certain circumstances his or her collateral could be used to cover his or her own losses?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: How about, does a customer agree that under certain circumstances his or her collateral could be used to cover the losses of other customers?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: The users' own losses.
MR. ROOS: Did FTX treat, say, one dollar of Bitcoin collateral the same way it treated one dollar of, say, FTT collateral?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: The BTC collateral would be treated as worth more because the price of Bitcoin is less volatile than the price of FTT.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Just excuse me a minute, Mr. Roos.
Mr. Wang, could you just answer again the question Mr. Roos just asked: How did it treat differently a dollar of Bitcoin collateral versus a dollar of FTT collateral?
GARY WANG: So a dollar of Bitcoin collateral it would treat as being worth roughly 90 or 95 cents, whereas the dollar of FTT collateral would only be treated as, say, 85 cents or so. That is because Bitcoin is less volatile than FTT. If Bitcoin is to be sold, that would usually cause the price of Bitcoin to change by less than how much the price of FTT would be sold if FTT was to be sold.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Is it correct that another way to say what you just said is that a unit of Bitcoin was worth more than a comparable unit than FTT for the purpose of collateralizing a margin loan?
GARY WANG: Yes. Even if they were both nominally worth one dollar, the BTC would be worth more when it is being used as collateral.
JUDGE KAPLAN: That's attributable to the larger and more stable market for Bitcoin than for FTT at the time you're speaking of?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Just to follow up on one of Judge Kaplan's questions, you said more volatile. What do you mean by that?
GARY WANG: It means that there is less trading activity or less people willing to buy or sell it. As a result, the price of it tends to fluctuate more both day to day and fluctuated more as a result of buying or selling a particular quantity of it.
GARY WANG: More illiquid, meaning that there is less of it traded on any particular day and fewer people who are willing to market-make, which then causes its price to tend to vary more.
JUDGE KAPLAN: And the word you were using was illiquid, i-l-l-i-q-u-i-d, not liquid, l-i-q-u-i-d. Is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: One other piggyback on another question Judge Kaplan asked.
You talked about the value of one Bitcoin as collateral versus one FTT as collateral.
GARY WANG: One dollar of Bitcoin versus one dollar of FTT.
MR. ROOS: My apologies. That's correct. What if it was $1 million of Bitcoin versus $1 million of FTT. Is how they are treated change?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So for larger amounts of collateral in a particular coin, that collateral becomes worth less as you have more of it.
And this discount is larger for FTT than for Bitcoin because if you have a very large size of a particular collateral, if it all needs to be sold at once, that's going to cause a large impact to the markets. But this change in how large that impact is, it's larger for less liquid coins compared to more liquid coins.
MR. ROOS: Let me just take us back to the discussion we were having about margin loans and margin lending. What's your recollection of approximately the most amount of money that was ever available to be borrowed in the margin lending system?
GARY WANG: It's around $2 billion.
MR. ROOS: And for the majority of customers on FTX, were they permitted to borrow money without going through that margin lending system?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: There was the line of credit system.
GARY WANG: It's an agreement between a customer of FTX and FTX that allows the customer to borrow funds to use as collateral on FTX without having to deposit those funds onto FTX.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: $65 billion.
GARY WANG: It means that there is virtually no limit to how large a position it can open or how many orders they can place, and there is very little risk that it would be liquidated.
MR. ROOS: Did any other customer of the exchange have a line of credit remotely close to that size?
GARY WANG: No.
MR. ROOS: Were you aware of other customers on the exchange besides Alameda that had a line of credit in the billions?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: A few dozen.
MR. ROOS: For the few dozen customers besides Alameda who had a line of credit, what was the rough size?
GARY WANG: Usually, single to double-digit millions.
MR. ROOS: Did a line of credit of that size, single to double-digit millions, create a risk to the FTX exchange?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Because FTX had enough funds from its trading profits and from investments to be able to cover that loss if they needed to.
MR. ROOS: What about Alameda's line of credit of $65 billion, did that create a risk to the exchange?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Because FTX would not have enough money to cover that if Alameda incurred a loss of that size.
MR. ROOS: I should have asked you this earlier. When someone is taking a line of credit and they are borrowing money on a line of credit, who are they borrowing that money from?
GARY WANG: From FTX.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: No.
MR. ROOS: At a high level, what were the rules and conditions to receive a line of credit for customers besides Alameda?
GARY WANG: So the customer needs to pay us an interest rate on the line of credit. They are not allowed to withdraw funds from the line of credit off the platform. They can only use the funds on FTX itself. They are not allowed to use the line of credit for spot trading. So if they have a million dollar line of credit, they can't use that million dollars to buy Bitcoin with it. They have to use that as collateral for margin trading or for features trades. And they have to keep their account popped up if their account suffers losses.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It's a line-of-credit agreement.
MR. EVERDELL: No objection.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Received.
(Government Exhibit 96 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes.
GARY WANG: It's a line-of-credit agreement.
MR. ROOS: These are the types of agreements you said FTX customers signed who got a line of credit?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: It says: Funds advanced through the line of credit: A. Will bear interest at a rate of 4 percent annum; B, may not be withdrawn from the FTX exchange.
I think that's something you mentioned. What did you mean by that?
GARY WANG: Say if you get a one million dollar line of credit, you can't just keep that $1 million and withdraw it and use it elsewhere. You have to use it on FTX itself.
GARY WANG: Because -- there is two reasons. One is that if you withdraw the funds, then you might not pay it back. And, two, because the purpose of the line of credit is to incentivize trading on FTX itself and not elsewhere.
MR. ROOS: 4C says: Funds in advance of a line of credit may not be used for spot trading. What does that mean?
GARY WANG: It means that you can't use -- you can't just directly use the line of credit to -- you can't convert the line of credit into other cryptocurrencies. You have to use it as it is.
JUDGE KAPLAN: I'm sorry. Could you explain what you meant by that.
GARY WANG: It means that you can only use the line of credit as collateral. So the line of credit is in U.S. dollars, and you can only use that as collateral for your account. You can't take those U.S. dollars and directly buy Bitcoin with it.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Thank you.
GARY WANG: Right.
GARY WANG: It says that if the account loses value by more than some threshold, it needs to deposit additional funds onto the platform to make up for the loss.
GARY WANG: Sam did.
GARY WANG: I am not.
MR. ROOS: Unlike other customers, was Alameda permitted to withdraw money from FTX using its line of credit?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Unlike other customers, was Alameda permitted to withdraw money from FTX using its line of credit without posting collateral?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It used that to withdraw funds. It also used it to place orders for its open positions.
GARY WANG: To withdraw funds off the exchange.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: We can take this exhibit down.
Pursuant to the stipulation in evidence as Government Exhibit 2002, the government offers Exhibit 644.
JUDGE KAPLAN: It's received.
(Government Exhibit 644 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes.
GARY WANG: This is showing the entry in FTX's accounts table for Alameda's main accounts.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It's -- it refers to the size of the higher credit for the accounts.
GARY WANG: $65,300,000,000.
MR. ROOS: I had asked you a bunch of questions about margin loans a few minutes ago.
Do you remember that?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: That refers to whether or not the account is in the spot-margin program, whether it's allowed to borrow from the spot-margin program.
GARY WANG: Not this account.
GARY WANG: No.
MR. ROOS: Just a general approximation. How much money did Alameda take through its main account?
GARY WANG: A few billion dollars. I think around $3 billion.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Because it's not in the spot-margin program.
JUDGE KAPLAN: So this was a few billion dollars in borrowing against the line of credit of 65 billion?
GARY WANG: Yes.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Thank you.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: This happened a few times that Alameda had issues placing orders on the exchange. Because Alameda was one of the main market makers on FTX that placed a large amount of orders in a large number of markets and each of those orders needs collateral to be placed. And a few times over the years Alameda would start running into issues placing orders because it did not have enough collateral. And when that happened, someone from Alameda would tell Sam and Sam would tell me that Alameda is having issues placing orders because it doesn't have enough collateral, and then Sam asks me to take up Alameda's line of credit.
GARY WANG: A few times.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: So initially it was just a few million dollars, a few hundred million dollars, and then this kept happening, so then to prevent this from continuing to be an issue, Sam asked us to take it a large number. I took it up to a billion dollars, and then the issue happened again. And then he asked me to take it up even farther, and I told him I am taking it up to $65 billion. He said he is fine with that, and then I did that.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: What did it mean in practice for -- withdraw the question.
Judge Kaplan asked you about the used line of credit versus the total line of credit a few moments ago.
Do you remember that?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It means that it could potentially put on conditions that would require $65 billion of collateral and, in addition, it could withdraw up to that amount.
GARY WANG: $65 billion, even if it did not have the allow-negative feature turned on.
MR. ROOS: So I just want to be clear about that last part you said. Did allow negative let Alameda make unlimited withdrawals?
MR. EVERDELL: Objection. Asked and answered.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Overruled.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: If Alameda withdrew all of that money and it was unable to pay it back, then customers might not be able to withdraw the funds from the platform.
MR. ROOS: In late 2021, did you become aware of how much money Alameda had withdrawn from FTX using its line of credit?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: In the database.
GARY WANG: It was around $3 billion.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Now, on the topic of treatment of Alameda, was Alameda Research treated the same or differently as other customers of FTX?
GARY WANG: Differently.
MR. ROOS: Do you recall the defendant ever making public statements about how Alameda Research was treated on FTX?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: He would say that Alameda is treated like any other market maker on FTX, that Alameda trades on FTX and is a market maker on FTX, but it's no different than any other market maker on FTX. It is trading using its own money. It doesn't use customer funds.
GARY WANG: He said this on Twitter, he said this in blog posts, he did this in interviews, and I heard him say this on phone calls with journalists and investors.
GARY WANG: The office was an open-plan office, and he would take phone calls sometimes at his desk or just walking around the office, and I could hear his end of the conversation.
MR. ROOS: Was there ever a time that you saw the defendant tweet about Alameda Research not having special treatment?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: The government offers Exhibit 817 pursuant to the stipulation marked as Government Exhibit 2001.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Received.
(Government Exhibit 817 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: You may.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: He asks: How are you going to resolve the conflict of interest of running your own derivatives exchange and actively trading against the market at the same time.
You see that tweet?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: July 31, 2019.
GARY WANG: That its account is like everyone else's and doesn't have --
MR. ROOS: You're referring to, Alameda is a liquidity provider on FTX, but their account is just like everyone else's?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: July 31, 2019.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: We created the allow-negative feature on FTX and enabled it for Alameda's account and a few other accounts.
MR. ROOS: Was it true that Alameda was a liquidity provider in FTX, but their account was just like everyone else's?
GARY WANG: No.
MR. ROOS: In addition to the defendant's statement about Alameda not being treated differently, do you remember him making any statements about how customer funds were treated?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: That customer funds are kept safe, that they are held in hot and cold wallets of FTX.
GARY WANG: On phone calls and on Twitter and in interviews.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Because some of it was withdrawn from FTX from the platform.
GARY WANG: It was withdrawn by Alameda from FTX.
GARY WANG: The cryptocurrency wallets that FTX had -- that FTX used to -- the cryptocurrency wallets that FTX had that it used to store customer assets.
GARY WANG: It's an account on the Blockchain that holds cryptocurrencies, so it has -- there are a public address -- the wallet has a public address, and then there is a private key that the owner of the account has which allows them to withdraw from the accounts.
GARY WANG: That's basically what it is. Except instead of a bank holding onto the account, you hold onto the account yourself.
GARY WANG: So hot wallets are the wallets that are being used to automatically handle deposits and withdrawals, and it is connected to the Internet. And the cold wallet is a separate wallet that's not connected to the Internet which is a more secure storage for assets, and periodically there is transfers between the two to facilitate customer withdrawals.
GARY WANG: That it was held in these wallets and a certain amount was held in the hot wallets and the remaining was held in the cold wallets.
GARY WANG: Well, some of it was also held by Alameda.
MR. ROOS: Let's change topics.
Did FTX advertise how it managed risk associated with customer trading on margin?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: That it was -- that FTX had an advanced margin system and advanced liquidation -- good liquidation system that ensured that customers' losses won't be borne by other customers, that one customer going bankrupt won't affect other customers on the exchange.
MR. ROOS: You described for us what liquidation is earlier in your testimony today, but can you walk us through the various processes for liquidating an account or a position.
GARY WANG: Yes. First, there is an automated process that detects whether or not an account should be liquidated or not based on its position size and its collateral. When it falls below that threshold, the first step, the FTX starts selling the account's positions just on the open market, just on the order book.
After a while, if that's not enough, if the account keeps losing money and its positions can't be closed this way, then it goes to the backstop liquidity providers, which are a set of market makers that have agreed to backstop liquidations.
MR. ROOS: Let me take those two parts. The first part, when you're liquidating positions, is that automatic or does someone need to trade?
GARY WANG: Both of these are automatic.
GARY WANG: There are particular market makers, other users on the platform who have agreed to be part of the process for liquidating the other accounts.
MR. ROOS: When you say these other users who help be part of the process to liquidate, what are you referring to?
GARY WANG: Once an account falls into the -- falls into the range that it would require sending the account's positions to the backstop liquidity providers, at that point the positions in the account are sold off to the market makers along with the collateral in the accounts.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: What happens if the backstop liquidity provider makes some money as part of that liquidation?
GARY WANG: So part of the profits from the liquidations goes into an insurance fund, and the insurance fund is used so that if the backstop liquidity provider would lose money liquidating the account, they get compensated from this insurance found.
MR. ROOS: That brings me to my next question. What happens when the backstop liquidity provider is liquidating an account and they take a loss?
GARY WANG: They are compensated for the loss from the insurance fund.
MR. ROOS: When you say backstop liquidity provider, what are we talking -- who are we talking about in practical terms? Who are these backstop liquidity providers?
GARY WANG: These are typically hedge funds on trade on FTX.
GARY WANG: So it's an entry in FTX's database that keeps track of how much funds were taken from profitable liquidations to help -- to hold in reserve for unprofitable liquidations.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: To ensure that if an account does not get liquidated in time, that other customers of FTX and FTX itself won't be affected by the loss of the customer.
MR. ROOS: What was the purpose of having all these steps: Liquidation, backstop liquidity provider, insurance fund?
GARY WANG: So they are there to protect FTX and protect its other customers.
GARY WANG: Prevent that if one customer loses a bunch of money trading that other customers of FTX won't be affected by this one user.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: When FTX was founded, on certain other cryptocurrency exchanges that had futures, when liquidations failed to happen quickly enough and users become negative as a result of that, those customer losses are made up by taking some of the profits from profitable traders in the bucket, so other customers' trading profits are taken away to use to fill in the hole left by customers who went negative.
GARY WANG: That they would not happen.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: That it advertised that it had a good risk system, a good liquidation system which, as a result, would prevent these clawbacks from happening.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: The government offers Exhibit 751 pursuant to stipulation marked as Government Exhibit 2001.
JUDGE KAPLAN: It's received.
(Government Exhibit 751 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Mr. Wang, looking at Government Exhibit 751, which is a February 14, 2021 tweet, what does this tweet show?
GARY WANG: It shows the screenshot of the size of the backstop fund.
MR. ROOS: When you say backstop fund, this is the same insurance fund that's supposed to cover losses?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Five and a half million USD and five million FTT.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: For one, there is no FTT in the insurance fund. It's just the USD number. And, two, the number listed here does not match what was in the database.
GARY WANG: The number in the databases was a different number.
GARY WANG: This comes from a page on the website that claims to show what was in the insurance fund, but it was actually calculated separately.
GARY WANG: So it's labeled as a backstop fund. It shows a number. But that number also calculated in a different process from what the insurance fund was actually using.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Lower.
MR. ROOS: Can we show the witness what's been marked as Government Exhibit 600. Actually, the government offers Exhibit 600 pursuant to stipulation 2002.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Received.
(Government Exhibit 600 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes, sir.
GARY WANG: This is a screenshot of a change to the FTX code base.
MR. ROOS: Earlier in your testimony we looked at some that were white with green and red changes. This is black. Is there any significance to that?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: This is adding a process that generates that number that shows up and also adds that page to the website.
MR. ROOS: Does this part of the code say how that insurance fund number on the website would be calculated?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Why don't we scroll about halfway down through this code, Mr. Bianco, to the part that says insurance fund updater.PY.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It's part of the code that updates that number that shows up on the website.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It shows up in lines 16 through 19.
GARY WANG: Yes. First, line 16 is saying what the name of this function is. Line 17, it's getting the daily -- it's getting the total volume of trades from the past 24 hours on FTX. Then in line 19 it's taking that number, multiplying it -- then multiplies that by a random number that's around 7500 and then dividing the result by a billion. That's a number that gets added to the number that shows up on the website.
MR. ROOS: So it takes the daily volume, multiplies it by a random number and divides it by a billion?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: This number was larger.
MR. ROOS: Were there times -- let me ask first, was the public outside the company, so customers, were they told that the insurance fund number on the site didn't accurately reflect the real number?
GARY WANG: No.
MR. ROOS: Were there times when there was not enough money in the real insurance fund to cover losses?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: In those cases, money would be moved over from Alameda into the insurance fund, or the insurance fund would just be increased without funds being subtracted.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: That we need to add more funds to the insurance fund from Alameda's account.
GARY WANG: So that liquidations can continue to happen.
MR. ROOS: Now, in addition to taking money and adding it to the insurance fund, were there ever times where Alameda just took on losses?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: There are cases where there is a large market movement. So when the prices of tokens that trade on FTX change by a large amount, and this triggers a large amount of liquidations, sometimes in those cases this will cause a very large loss to come from the insurance fund, and in those cases Sam would ask me to go into the database and change the prices that Alameda paid for those liquidation, which would cause Alameda to take the loss instead of the insurance fund.
In other cases, there would be one big account that needs to be liquidated at a loss, and then Sam would just help me to take that account that needs to be liquidated at a loss and just have Alameda take it on.
MR. ROOS: Let me ask you a few follow-up questions with that last part. There were some big accounts that took -- that had a loss, you said?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: The one example of this, there was an account that exploited a loophole in FTX's margin system which allowed them to deposit a small amount of collateral but then use that to put -- over the course of a couple of months put on a very large position, and then at some point the value of the position began to drop and caused them to need to be liquidated. And while putting on this position they moved the price that they were trading by a large amount. So when they needed to be liquidated, they -- what was liquidating incurred a large loss.
GARY WANG: In this particular case it involved MobileCoin, MOB.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: This was in 2021.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: I am going to ask you a few questions about the MobileCoin exploitation.
How big of a loss did the MobileCoin exploitation cause?
GARY WANG: Several hundred million dollars.
GARY WANG: FTX.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: He told me to have Alameda take it on.
GARY WANG: So that account -- the accountants of that account and its positions, both its positions and its collateral, were transferred to Alameda.
MR. ROOS: When that happened, what, if anything, did the defendant say about why it should be Alameda?
GARY WANG: He said that FTX's balance sheets are more public than Alameda's balance sheets, that investors have access to FTX's finances but not Alameda's finances.
MR. ROOS: Do you recall the defendant ever saying that if there was a big loss FTX would have to claw back money from FTX's customers to cover it?
GARY WANG: No.
MR. ROOS: Do you recall the defendant ever saying that if there was a big loss FTX would have to make other customers cover it?
GARY WANG: No.
MR. ROOS: Your Honor, at this point we are going to play a recording and use the transcripts, if your Honor is OK.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Why don't we take our morning break here, 15 minutes.
(Jury not present)
(Recess)
(In open court; jury not present)
JUDGE KAPLAN: How much more on the direct, Mr. Roos?
MR. ROOS: I think, by my outline, we're a little over 2/3 of the way through, but those code parts were the longest and so my guess is an hour. Could be less. I'm not sure.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Okay.
(Continued on next page)
(Jury present)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Okay. The defendant and the jurors all are present, as they have been throughout.
Mr. Roos, you may continue.
BY MR. ROOS:
MR. ROOS: Mr. Wang, you were testifying about some expenses or losses, and I want to play a recording for you.
MR. ROOS: Government offers Exhibit 919-A, pursuant to stipulation 2000. And according to the stipulation, this is an excerpt from a Bloomberg interview with Samuel Bankman-Fried.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Okay.
(Government's Exhibit 919-A received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: You may. It's received.
MR. ROOS: And your Honor, the jurors have under their seats a binder containing transcripts, and so with your Honor's permission, they could read along under the tab for 919.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Okay. Folks, please do that. I instruct you that the evidence is the audio recording, not the transcript, and in case there's anything that you hear that's different in the recording from what's in the transcript, it's the recording that counts.
Let's go.
(Audio played)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Given the proclivity of the speaker to speak in a language that I'm not fully understanding, do you have a transcript for me?
JUDGE KAPLAN: I don't have this problem often, only with anybody under 50.
If you don't have it, I'll struggle through.
Thank you very much. Okay. Let's resume.
MR. ROOS: And your Honor, it's 919-A, and it says Matt Levine is the reporter who was speaking quickly there.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Thank you.
(Audio played)
BY MR. ROOS:
MR. ROOS: Mr. Wang, let's just start with the basics. The second speaker you heard there, who was that?
GARY WANG: That was Sam.
GARY WANG: It's when prices move in the market all at once by large amounts and——and that results——that causes a large number of accounts to be liquidated.
MR. ROOS: Okay. And he said that FTX never had a day where there were blowouts greater than revenue. Did you hear that?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: There were days where FTX lost more money from customers going——being liquidated than FTX earned in trading fees.
GARY WANG: It transferred them to Alameda.
GARY WANG: Sam did.
MR. ROOS: Turning to 2022, were there any times when you spoke with the defendant about Alameda having a negative balance?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So——so Sam had six monitors connected to his computers and usually half of one of those screens, he had Alameda's balances pulled up.
MR. ROOS: Now, Mr. Wang, the screens here——what's on the screens has been blurred out, but are these the screens you were referring to?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: The page from——from Alameda's trading system, called Pointer, would show how much Alameda had on various exchanges and what coins it had on those exchanges.
GARY WANG: I didn't see him looking directly at that screen, but it was just there on his screen.
MR. ROOS: Let Le rephrase the question. How frequently was that on one of the defendant's screens?
GARY WANG: I think it was usually there.
GARY WANG: Yeah.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: I want to direct your attention to the month of June 2022. Okay. Did there come a time when you worked on a project to calculate Alameda's total balances?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: There was a group chat that Sam started where he asked me to figure out what Alameda's balances on FTX were.
GARY WANG: Prices for a bunch of cryptocurrencies had fallen by a large amount.
MR. ROOS: And you testified yesterday that Alameda funded itself through loans. Do you remember that?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Okay. And what was happening at Alameda with respect to its loans at this time in June 2022?
GARY WANG: Some lenders were asking for their money back.
MR. ROOS: As part of the defendant's project to review Alameda's balances on FTX, did you work on a spreadsheet?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: And when you say spreadsheet, just so we're all clear, what type of computer file are you talking about?
GARY WANG: So a Google Sheets.
GARY WANG: In Google.
GARY WANG: So it's a spreadsheet with——I mean, it looks like——looks pretty similar to Excel. It's just a spreadsheet with a bunch of cells and columns and formulas in them.
GARY WANG: Pretty common.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: For Google Sheets, just using Google's built-in sharing feature.
GARY WANG: By sending the link to it in Signal chats.
MR. ROOS: And when you were sharing the spreadsheets over Google, was it possible for more than one person to look at the spreadsheet at a given time?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Now circling back to the defendant's balance project, did you meet in person or communicate over Google or some other computer method?
GARY WANG: Initially we communicated online, and then later on we met in person.
MR. ROOS: I'm going to show you what's been marked——just for the witness——as Government Exhibit 50.
Do you recognize this?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It's a spreadsheet we worked on to calculate Alameda's balances.
MR. ROOS: Is this the spreadsheet that you worked on back in June 2022 that you were talking about?
GARY WANG: Yes, except this has been exported to Excel.
MR. EVERDELL: No objection.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Received.
(Government's Exhibit 50 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes.
BY MR. ROOS:
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: I want to ask you several questions about it. Let's kind of march through it.
So first, what prompted the creation of this particular spreadsheet?
JUDGE KAPLAN: You didn't. Would you like to?
JUDGE KAPLAN: Sure.
JUDGE KAPLAN: And let's be clear, when you use the term worksheet, whether you are referring to a particular tab on this multi-tab document or to the whole thing.
BY MR. ROOS:
MR. ROOS: So, Mr. Wang, first, talking about the whole document, what prompted the work on the balances spreadsheet?
GARY WANG: Sam asked us to figure out what Alameda's balances on FTX were.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: I did, Caroline did, Nishad did, and Sam looked at it.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: In June 2022.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: This is Alameda's records of what balances it has on each exchange——I mean, what Alameda has on each account it has on FTX.
GARY WANG: Column A shows Alameda's internal name for that account.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It shows the balance in USD of that account.
GARY WANG: So the US dollar value of the——the balance in the account.
MR. ROOS: So just to be clear on how we read this, let's look at the very first one below there. It says five billion seventy-seven. Do you see that?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Column C is the email address associated with the account on FTX.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Column D is the name of the subaccounts, if the account has subaccounts.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Mr. Bianco, could you select the first balance and highlight down to the last balance listed there.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Negative 20 billion.
GARY WANG: Yes.
JUDGE KAPLAN: I don't think this is all on the screen.
JUDGE KAPLAN: 20 billion.
MR. ROOS: Let's put that back up, Mr. Bianco. Just highlight all the balances in column B and leave it, and then I will——I think I can highlight it right here.
BY MR. ROOS:
GARY WANG: Yes.
JUDGE KAPLAN: No. What you've circled is what appears to be a search line, on my screen.
MR. ROOS: How about other folks?
How about, Mr. Bianco, is it possible to sort of move up the bottom of the——it's not.
What about like unexpanding the doc? Yeah, okay. And then not all the way down.
Mr. Bianco, thank you.
BY MR. ROOS:
JUDGE KAPLAN: I see.
JUDGE KAPLAN: From what you're referring to, yes, I see it now, and it's not within the spreadsheet, it's elsewhere, but I see it now.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Negative 20 billion.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Caroline did.
MR. ROOS: And Mr. Bianco, if we can expand this again to fill the whole page, and we'll scroll to the top.
MR. ROOS: So Caroline Ellison worked on this. And did the defendant have any reaction upon seeing or hearing negative 20 billion?
GARY WANG: He thought that that number was too negative, that the actual number for Alameda's balances were probably more positive than 20 billion.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It was——it was off by around $8 billion because of a bug in FTX's accounting system.
MR. ROOS: Can you describe what the bug in the accounting system——actually, before I ask you that, let me ask you: What accounting system are you referring to?
GARY WANG: The accounting system for keeping track of USD deposits and withdrawals into bank accounts for customers of FTX.
GARY WANG: So deposits and withdrawals, deposits and withdrawals from bank accounts into FTX.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So initially when FTX was created, FTX did not have its own bank accounts, and it used——and it used Alameda's bank accounts, and whenever a customer would deposit funds into——whenever a customer deposits dollars into FTX via the bank, they would send the dollars into F——into Alameda's bank accounts, and then on FTX, their accounts on FTX would——the user's account on FTX would be incremented by however much they deposited and a special fiat@ftx.com account would be decremented by the same amount.
GARY WANG: So increased and decreased.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It reflects however much Alameda owes FTX due to these customers' deposits.
GARY WANG: Well, sort of, because if a customer deposits dollars and withdraws it as a stablecoin, then Alameda takes the money in the bank account, withdraws it, turns it into a stablecoin, deposits it back into FTX. So it won't actually reflect what's in the bank account itself. It just reflects how much Alameda owes FTX for these deposits.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So the bug was that when customers withdraw dollars from FTX——so what should happen is that when a customer withdraws dollars from FTX, Alameda sends out the money from its bank accounts and then the customer's account is decremented by that amount and the fiat account is incremented by that amount, to show that Alameda no longer owes FTX this money. But there was a bug where, for certain withdrawals, for certain type of withdrawals, the account was not incremented, the account balance was not incremented, and so the value in the fiat@ftx.com account would be too negative.
MR. ROOS: Let me say it to you very basically and you tell me if this is right. Basically it was just not recording withdrawals.
GARY WANG: After——certain types of withdrawals, yes.
MR. ROOS: Certain types of withdrawals. Okay. So you said the total balance for Alameda was wrong on that first sheet. How was it wrong?
GARY WANG: It was too negative. The actual value should have been less negative.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Let's look at Tab 2 of Exhibit 50. What does Tab 2, or Sheet 2, as it's labeled, refer to?
GARY WANG: It's a——it's a——it's how much Alameda has on FTX as reflected in FTX's database, as opposed to Sheet 1, which was as reflected in Alameda's database.
GARY WANG: Column A is the account ID of the account or subaccount at FTX.
MR. ROOS: And so earlier we looked at a table that listed account IDs within FTX's database. Are those the same account IDs that are here?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: The name of the account, the subaccount.
GARY WANG: The value in dollars of the balances of the accounts.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: That's the info@alamedaresearch.com account, the main trading account.
GARY WANG: Negative $2.7 billion.
MR. ROOS: I want to be clear about something, since we've been talking about fiat and crypto balances. This 2.784 billion negative number, is that part of the fiat deposit stuff you were just talking about?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Is this withdrawals, a negative balance from withdrawals of cryptocurrency or of fiat?
GARY WANG: A combination.
MR. ROOS: And is the copy of Sheet 2 the same as Sheet 2 except it's got this Gary number up there?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Okay. All right. But your descriptions of the columns——ID, Name, Value——are otherwise the same?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Okay. Now, Mr. Bianco, can we sort the name, sort this column by name, A to Z? Thank you.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Does this version of the spreadsheet——by the way, who worked on this version of the spreadsheet?
GARY WANG: This sheet was me, primarily, and then Nishad had——and then Nishad——there's a column where Nishad left some notes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Line 14.
GARY WANG: Line 13.
GARY WANG: You end up with the correct balances for fiat@s.
GARY WANG: Around negative $11 billion.
GARY WANG: Yes.
JUDGE KAPLAN: And that was owed to FTX; is that correct?
GARY WANG: Yes.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Thank you.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It's——it's a sum of the——of column C, of all these accounts, except with one of the numbers excluded, 'cause it should not have been included in this sheet.
MR. ROOS: I'll come back to that in a second.
And so is "Gary's number" the total of Alameda's balances in June 2022?
GARY WANG: On FTX, yes.
GARY WANG: Approximately negative $11 billion.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Okay. Now you said that there was a number that was included in your total that——there was a number in the balances that shouldn't be included in your total; is that what you said?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: This was for——I think it's——scroll down a bit. It's——there was a——there was——a investment into FTX that went through an Alameda account and didn't have to do with Alameda so then it needed to be excluded from this fee.
GARY WANG: $1.2 billion.
GARY WANG: The investments that FTX received involving this investment rounds.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Now earlier in your testimony you spoke about Alameda's balances compared to FTX's total revenue. Do you remember that?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: And at this point in June 2022, which was larger, the amount Alameda owed or FTX's revenue?
GARY WANG: The amount Alameda owed.
GARY WANG: About $1½ billion.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Objection.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Overruled.
GARY WANG: So the remaining funds that weren't FTX revenue or the investment, the remaining all came from customers.
MR. ROOS: Let's scroll back up to where we see "Gary's number."
So the point where customer funds were being used, did you think that was wrong?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Because customers did not agree for us to use these funds.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Because we said publicly that we would not use customer funds like this.
GARY WANG: Sam.
MR. ROOS: And did you think Alameda could just take the fiat deposits and loan them to the——loan them to itself?
MR. EVERDELL: Objection, your Honor.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Sustained.
GARY WANG: It either kept it in the bank account or converted it into stablecoin and deposited it back onto FTX.
GARY WANG: Only during this conversion.
JUDGE KAPLAN: I'm sorry. Repeat your answer, please.
GARY WANG: Only to do this US dollar-to-stablecoin conversion and to immediately deposit it back onto FTX.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Thank you.
MR. ROOS: So just to be clear, what was your understanding about whether those customer funds could be used to spend on new investments for Alameda?
GARY WANG: It was not——it should not happen.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: No.
MR. ROOS: Now after the work on the spreadsheet was done, did you meet with the defendant on the topic of Alameda's balances?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: After I——after I mentioned that the number was——that Alameda's balances as calculated was off by $8 billion because of this bug, and then after the four of us——so him, me, Caroline, and Nishad, to meet with him in one of the offices in the Bahamas office, in one of the meeting rooms in the Bahamas office.
GARY WANG: So Sam asked me some questions about the bug, and he wanted to make sure that his——my understanding and his understanding of the bug was correct, that it——that it affected the balance in the correction direction, that fixing the balances made it more positive as opposed to more negative. So we talked about that a bit, and then as he——and then afterwards, he turned to Caroline and said that Alameda can go ahead and return the borrows.
(The reporter interrupted for clarification)
GARY WANG: Yes.
JUDGE KAPLAN: I'm sorry. I just want to make sure I heard. Said that Alameda can go ahead and return the borrows? Is that what you said?
GARY WANG: Yes.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Thank you. Let's go ahead.
BY MR. ROOS:
MR. ROOS: In your conversation about the fixing that bug, did you talk about Alameda's negative balances?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: And was that before or after the defendant said to Caroline Ellison that they could return the borrows?
GARY WANG: Before.
GARY WANG: To lenders who loaned Alameda money and were asking for it back.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Means give them back the money that they were asking for back.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: He——he gave opinions on how much Alameda could borrow from lenders, how much should be returned to lenders, what interest rates it should accept when taking out loans.
GARY WANG: I think he mentioned Genesis.
GARY WANG: It's a crypto lending firm that lends out cryptocurrencies to trading firms.
MR. ROOS: Your number here for Alameda's balance at this point was negative 11 billion. Where was the money going to come from to repay those lenders?
GARY WANG: I mean, either from Alameda's FTX account or from Alameda's accounts elsewhere, but either way, the money——all the money came from FTX customers.
MR. ROOS: Let's jump ahead a few months to September 2022. Do you recall another conversation with the defendant, this time about shutting down Alameda?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So there was an article that was soon to be published in Bloomberg about the relationship between Alameda and FTX, and he was not happy——Sam sent a Signal chat to Nishad and I with a link to a Google Doc describing shutting down Alameda.
MR. ROOS: Let me first ask you about that article. You said it related to the relationship between FTX and Alameda. What are you referring to?
GARY WANG: That they shared an office, that they were owned by the same——by roughly the same set of people, and that they were——and so they weren't entirely separate.
GARY WANG: That——
MR. EVERDELL: Objection.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Sustained.
GARY WANG: He said that it would be bad for FTX.
GARY WANG: Because it would cause people to trust FTX less.
MR. ROOS: Now you mentioned that the defendant shared a Google document with you. What was that Google document?
GARY WANG: It was describing some arguments for shutting down Alameda.
MR. ROOS: All right. Why don't we take a look. I'm going to show you what's been marked for identification as Government Exhibit 18.
What's this, Mr. Wang?
GARY WANG: This is the Google Doc that Sam shared with us.
GARY WANG: Nishad and I.
MR. EVERDELL: No objection.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Received.
(Government's Exhibit 18 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes.
BY MR. ROOS:
GARY WANG: Sam was.
GARY WANG: Via Google Docs.
GARY WANG: Nishad.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Okay. We can go back to the top page.
So the first reason here listed——it says The Reasons. No. 1. "A PR hit from Alameda and FTX both existing as really large." Do you see that?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: The Bloomberg piece that was soon to come out.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: And a little later on here, No. 6, he said, "To the extent there is a niche for a trading firm, that firm should be Modulo."
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It's another trading firm.
MR. ROOS: And he notes that it has much stronger culture and leadership than Alameda. Now on Alameda, who was the leader of Alameda at the time?
GARY WANG: Caroline was.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: They dated on and off for a couple years.
GARY WANG: I don't think so.
MR. ROOS: Now he writes, "Modulo has a much stronger culture and leadership than Alameda." Who was leading Modulo?
GARY WANG: Two former Jane Street traders.
GARY WANG: It was Lily and Duncan.
GARY WANG: They were co-workers, and then at one point they dated.
GARY WANG: We talked about it on Signal some——some more, and then Nishad and I went and talked to Caroline.
GARY WANG: It's a——it's a chat app, chat application that's——that we used.
GARY WANG: Hashtag organization.
MR. ROOS: Okay. And before I ask you further about the Signal chat, by the way, Modulo, did the defendant have any relationship to Modulo?
GARY WANG: He invested in it.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Around 60 percent.
MR. ROOS: Now you said you communicated over a Signal chat, after you got this Google document. Who was in that Signal chat?
GARY WANG: Sam, me, and Nishad.
GARY WANG: We discussed the point in the documents about what it would take to shut down Alameda, and then Sam brought up the question of how much——like what Alameda is currently doing on FTX and how hard it would be to find a replacement for all the things that Alameda is currently doing on FTX, and he asked us what those things were, and then Nishad and I went and——went to talk to Caroline to ask her about what market-making things Alameda is currently doing at FTX.
MR. ROOS: Okay. And after that did there come a time where the four of you——you, the defendant, Nishad Singh, Caroline Ellison——communicated?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: On Signal.
GARY WANG: Okay. This——this one was I think hashtag organization and the previous chats was a different chat, I think. I got the names mixed up.
MR. ROOS: All right. I'm going to show you now what's been marked for identification as Government Exhibit 542. What's this?
GARY WANG: A screenshot of the #organization chats.
(Continued on next page)
MR. EVERDELL: No objection.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Received.
(Government Exhibit 542 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yup.
GARY WANG: This is a screenshot of the hashtag organization Signal chats.
GARY WANG: Sam, me, Nishad, and Caroline.
MR. ROOS: You were describing a period in September 2022. Do the messages still exist for that time period?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Because they were set to automatically be deleted after a week.
GARY WANG: Sam.
GARY WANG: We discussed a lot of things over the couple of years that we had these chats about FTX and Alameda.
GARY WANG: We discussed what Alameda was doing, the things that Alameda was doing with FTX, and what it would take to find a replacement for those things.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So I asked Caroline how much Alameda was currently borrowing from FTX, and she said 14 billion.
GARY WANG: 14 billion with a B, $14 billion.
MR. ROOS: At the time that Ellison said Alameda was borrowing 14 billion, do you recall the defendant responding with any message with surprise?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: No.
MR. ROOS: Now, when Alameda Research was borrowing $14 billion, what does that mean its balance was?
GARY WANG: Negative $14 billion on FTX.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Because FTX did not have that much money itself.
MR. ROOS: Did you have any additional conversations with the defendant and Nishad Singh about this?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So in the three-person chat I brought up that Alameda was borrowing $14 billion from FTX and argued that Alameda could not shut down as a result.
GARY WANG: Because it had no way of repaying this.
GARY WANG: Because it did not have $14 billion in the assets that it could sell off to repay it.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: No.
MR. ROOS: Let's move ahead to November 2022. Can you describe briefly what happened to FTX in November 2022.
GARY WANG: It declared bankruptcy because customers wanted to withdraw funds, and they could not because FTX ran out of funds.
MR. ROOS: Let's break that down in some more detail.
Did there come a time in November 2022 when you learned about an increase in customer withdrawals?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: To orient us, let's take a look at a calendar.
Showing you now Government Exhibit 1087, do you recognize this?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It's a calendar of November 2022.
MR. EVERDELL: No objection.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Received.
(Government Exhibit 1087 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Looking at the calendar, Mr. Wang, when did you first learn of an increase in customers withdrawing their money from FTX?
GARY WANG: Sunday, the 6th.
GARY WANG: Nishad came and knocked on my door and told me there were a large amount of customer withdrawals, and they were getting backed up in the system and asked me to try to speed up with processing of those withdrawals.
GARY WANG: To make people less worried about their withdrawals not being able get processed.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So later that day, in the evening, Sam asked Nishad and I to go to his apartment where he told us about the events -- which he told us there was some article that was published with a leaked version of Alameda's balance sheets, and this caused a lot of customers to be worried about their deposits on FTX and caused them to all start withdrawing their funds.
GARY WANG: There was some balance sheet of Alameda that got leaked to some websites, and it was published on some crypto news site.
GARY WANG: It showed that a large portion -- that almost all of their assets came from FTT and Serum.
GARY WANG: It's a cryptocurrency that Sam and I and others created.
MR. ROOS: So the balance sheet showed that almost all of Alameda's assets were cryptocurrencies that had been created by you and Sam?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: That I should try to speed up the processing of the withdrawals so that people are less worried about their withdrawals not going through, and I should calculate how much additional funds to be deposited onto FTX so that customers can withdraw all of the funds.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: I totaled -- I added up customer -- customer balances excluding Alameda balances, so non-Alameda customers. So I compared that total with what was in FTX hot wallets and found that they were approximately equal.
MR. ROOS: When you say FTX hot wallets, you're talking about those cryptocurrency wallets that you talked about earlier?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: What was your reaction to seeing that the balances needed were equal to what FTX had in the wallets?
GARY WANG: I was surprised because I knew that Alameda was borrowing funds from FTX.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: He asked me if I was including the special Korean accounts, and I asked him what he meant, and he said, are you including our Korean friend.
GARY WANG: I didn't know what he was talking about, so I asked him what he was talking about. Then Nishad sent me the account ID and said this was the account that the balances in the fiat account -- the fiat FTX account got moved to.
GARY WANG: Yes.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Received.
(Government Exhibit 645 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes.
Can we zoom in on the user ID and user names.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So the last one was the account -- account ID Nishad sent to me. It used to be an Alameda subaccount, but then it was reassociated in the database to fall under Seoyun Charles' account, this seoyuncharles88@gmail.com account.
MR. ROOS: Let me break this down. The user ID on all of these accounts says: User, seoyuncharles88@gmail.com.
What does that refer to?
GARY WANG: That refers to which users these accounts and subaccounts were associated with.
MR. ROOS: Then the column user name has Seoyun Charles for three of them and info@alamedaresearch for one of them.
Do those refer to?
GARY WANG: Those are the user names of the account or subaccount when it was created.
MR. ROOS: Can you explain what you meant by this info@alameda-research account being reassigned?
GARY WANG: So this account used to be a subaccount of Alameda Research's main account, but then in the database there was -- the user ID column of this account was changed so that it was now a subaccount of this other user, Seoyun Charles.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: So this is the weird Korean account.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: It refers to -- initially, FTX didn't have its own bank accounts, so it used Alameda bank accounts. But eventually FTX did get its own bank accounts, so USD deposits and withdrawals started going to and from FTX's own bank accounts, as opposed to Alameda's bank accounts.
At some point in 2022, we decided to split up the fiat account into separate accounts based on which bank accounts funds are coming to it from. So the funds that were -- that came and went from Alameda accounts, those funds were transferred into a subaccount of Alameda called FTX fiat old. And the funds that -- that came from and went to FTX bank accounts, that remained associated with the fiat@FTX.com account.
MR. ROOS: Let's zoom out of here. Let's look at the allow-negative column.
Did one of those Seoyun Charles subaccounts have allow negative turned on? A. Yes.
GARY WANG: The FTX fiat old one.
MR. ROOS: Did you look up the balance for that account after the defendant told you about the account?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Around negative $8 billion.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: He said that that sounds correct.
GARY WANG: He had a neutral demeanor.
GARY WANG: Now the exchange was short $8 billion.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Pause, please, for a minute.
Earlier -- I am going to go back in my notes -- you talked about, this was as of September, I think, a negative balance of 14 billion, yes?
GARY WANG: Yes.
JUDGE KAPLAN: And then you had this conversation about non-Alameda customer balances and FTX hot wallets.
What did that amount to?
GARY WANG: That discrepancy was $8 billion.
JUDGE KAPLAN: And then the defendant asked you --
GARY WANG: After including -- after excluding this other account.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Thank you.
MR. ROOS: Mr. Wang, did you speak to anyone about why this account with a negative $8 billion balance wasn't originally included in all those account calculations?
GARY WANG: Yes.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Whom did you speak to?
GARY WANG: Sam and Nishad.
GARY WANG: That this was changed from an Alameda subaccount to this other user so that its balances would not be included in the line-of-credit interest payments that Alameda was paying.
GARY WANG: The evening of the 6th.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Received.
(Government Exhibit 878 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes.
GARY WANG: It's a set of tweets from the FTX official to the new accounts.
MR. ROOS: Before we go to the substance, it comes from the FTX official account.
Do you know whose tweet this is?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Sam's.
GARY WANG: So it was tweeted right after I talked to him, and the wording from all the tweets matches what I had just told him.
GARY WANG: November 7.
GARY WANG: 1:50 a.m.
GARY WANG: After.
GARY WANG: Bitcoin withdrawals.
MR. ROOS: BTC withdrawals, churning through them. Node is frequent limited. We are switching it, the process from both ends, which should help speed it up.
What does that mean?
GARY WANG: So it means there were a large number of Bitcoin withdrawals being queued up and the way in which we could process them was limited by the Bitcoin software we were using, and we switched it to processing both the most recent and all these withdrawals at the same time, which had caused recent withdrawals to be processed more quickly.
MR. ROOS: Then number 3, the beginning says: 3. Stablecoin's processing. Banks are closed for the weekend, though.
What's stablecoin?
GARY WANG: It's a cryptocurrency whose value was tied to U.S. dollars.
MR. ROOS: This is saying, this particular cryptocurrency processing is slow because banks are closed?
MR. EVERDELL: Objection.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Sustained.
MR. ROOS: What's the relationship -- according to the tweet, what's the relationship between banks being closed and stablecoin processing?
GARY WANG: That stablecoin processing is slow because banks are closed.
MR. ROOS: Did the defendant's tweet accurately convey the reason for the delay in customer withdrawals?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Because stablecoin withdrawals were slow because FTX had ran out of stablecoins. Even if banks were open, they would still not be able to be processing these.
MR. ROOS: Let's take this down and put up Government Exhibit 866. This is in evidence.
Can we zoom in on the tweets. Why don't we start with the first tweet here. We can zoom out and zoom in on that first one.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Because FTX was not fine and assets were not fine because FTX did not have enough assets for customer withdrawals.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Because FTX did not in fact have enough assets to cover all client holdings.
GARY WANG: Because Alameda had withdrawn a lot of it.
MR. ROOS: The next line of that tweet right after says: We don't invest client assets, even in treasuries.
Was that true?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Because FTX was lending client assets to Alameda.
MR. ROOS: Do you see there at the end it says: We have a long history of safeguarding client assets and that remains true today. Was that true?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Because the client assets were with Alameda.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Some of it was trading losses. Some of it was spent on investments.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: To CZ, the owner of Binance, another cryptocurrency exchange.
GARY WANG: To get money to fill in the hole left by Alameda.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Because CZ pulled out.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: That FTX did not have enough money for customer withdrawals and it seemed unlikely that FTX would be able to raise enough money for those withdrawals.
GARY WANG: Thursday, the 10th.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: On the morning of the 11th.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: No.
MR. ROOS: Let's talk about the day after the bankruptcy declaration.
Did there come a time when you transferred FTX customer assets to government officials in the Bahamas?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: The government officials did, but Sam also did.
MR. ROOS: Let's break that down in a little more detail.
First, I want to direct your attention to November 12, the Saturday. Was there a time when the defendant asked you to drive with him to the Bahamas Securities Commission?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Objection.
JUDGE KAPLAN: What's the ground?
MR. EVERDELL: Leading.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Overruled.
GARY WANG: It's a regulator in the Bahamas that regulates FTX.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: During that drive, did the defendant say anything to you about what you should do with customer assets?
GARY WANG: That ideally we should transfer them to the Bahamas liquidators or the Bahamas regulators.
GARY WANG: Because earlier that day we had met with liquidators in the Bahamas, and they seemed friendly and seemed willing to let him stay in control of the company.
MR. ROOS: By the way, at this point were customers able to take their money off the exchange at this point?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: So, for one, FTX had ran out of money for customers to withdraw, and, two, on the evening of the 11th, all the servers that ran FTX were shut down.
GARY WANG: Sam and his lawyers and his dad went and met with Bahamian regulators.
GARY WANG: I was waiting outside, along with consultants for the liquidators, and they asked me some questions about the logistics of how to do the transfers from FTX's wallets.
MR. ROOS: After the defendant's meeting with the Bahamas government officials, did he tell you about how it went?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: He said that the meeting went well. He said that the securities commissioner believed to think things he told her and that they were going to order us to transfer the assets -- the remaining assets to the Bahamas.
GARY WANG: After that, we drove back to the office.
GARY WANG: He said that -- also at this point the U.S. side was asking me to finish transferring the remaining assets to the U.S., and Sam told me that we should try to stall them.
GARY WANG: The bankruptcy lawyers that had taken over FTX and FTX.US, and they are from within the U.S.
GARY WANG: The lawyers from the U.S.
GARY WANG: It took a while for the Bahamian regulators to figure out how to do the transfer. Eventually, they figured it out and ordered us to do the transfer.
MR. ROOS: While you were transferring the money, did you get any instructions from a U.S. bankruptcy team?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: I'm blanking on the name.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It's screenshot of a Signal chats.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Received.
(Government Exhibit 543 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Contained a number of people who were still at the company at this point, so me, Sam, Nishad, and Caroline, some lawyers from the U.S. bankruptcy team and a few other people.
MR. ROOS: Now, let's zoom out on this part and zoom in on the defendant's message and the parts below it.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Ryne Miller, yes.
GARY WANG: He was the lawyer for FTX US.
GARY WANG: Ryne Miller.
GARY WANG: Securities commissioner of the Bahamas.
MR. ROOS: The SCB, Christina Rolle, is directing us to transfer the assets to a custodian in their name. They say we're doing so to protect the interest of creditors and clients of FTX digital markets and other entities that might be commingled. We are being directed to do so.
Did you see that message around that time?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Then there is a blue response. This is a significant question of who owns the assets. FDM does not.
What is FDM?
GARY WANG: FTX digital markets. It's FTX's entity in the Bahamas.
GARY WANG: It's --
MR. EVERDELL: Objection, your Honor. Hearsay.
JUDGE KAPLAN: What is Sulcrom does not call for hearsay, as far as I know.
Do you know what Sulcrom means, sir?
GARY WANG: Yes.
JUDGE KAPLAN: What?
GARY WANG: Sulcrom is one of the law firms that FTX hired.
MR. ROOS: You see the next part says: Cannot transfer any funds that are the subject of the bankruptcy estate, i.e., assets owned by FTX Trading LTD, WRSS, WRS Alameda, etc.
What's WRSS and WRS?
GARY WANG: West Realm Shires Services and WRS is West Realm Services. They are entities for FTX US.
MR. ROOS: Now, it says in the next sentence: These are all not assets of the Bahamian entity, including, i.e., the Robin Hood shares which essentially roll up under Alameda. Before folks transfer to the Bahamas, absolutely consult with me, and I'll bring in the appropriate counsel.
Did you see those two messages at the time?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: That I should ignore the instructions and continue transferring funds.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: What did the defendant tell you about why he wanted the money to go to the Bahamas regulators?
GARY WANG: He said they are more likely -- they seemed more friendly to him, and they seemed more likely to let him stay in control of the company, compared to the U.S.
GARY WANG: Saturday, the 12th, leading into the early morning of the 13th.
MR. ROOS: Did there come a time -- so it's here. Did there come a time when you returned to the United States and met special agents with the FBI and federal prosecutors?
GARY WANG: Yes. I returned to the U.S. on the 16th -- on Wednesday, the 16th and met with the government on the 17th.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: How many days passed between FTX's bankruptcy and when you came in and met with the government?
GARY WANG: Six days.
GARY WANG: Friday, the 11th.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: Now, when you came in and met with the government, had you been arrested or charged with any crimes?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Because, one, because it seemed like the right thing to do and, two, to try to get a shorter -- because I thought it was likely I was going to be charged, so I wanted to get a shorter -- trying to avoid a prison sentence.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Wire fraud, commodities fraud, and securities fraud.
GARY WANG: Four.
MR. ROOS: Was that plea based on the criminal activity you have described over the last two days?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: When you were committing the activities you testified about, did you know what you were doing was wrong and illegal?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Sam, Caroline, and Nishad.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: In December 2022.
GARY WANG: A month.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: It's cooperation agreement I signed with the government.
GARY WANG: Yes.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Received.
MR. EVERDELL: No objection.
(Government Exhibit 3585-30 received in evidence)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Six.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: I want to focus here on what your obligations are, what your understanding is of your obligations under the cooperation agreement. What do you understand that you have to do?
GARY WANG: That I would need to meet with the government and answer their questions truthfully, tell them anything I know, give them access to any devices or records that I have, that I would not commit any other crimes, that I would testify if asked to on behalf of the government, and tell the truth.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: About a dozen.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: The government asked me questions, and then I truthfully answered them.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: You're testifying here pursuant to your cooperation agreement you said, is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: That I must be truthful.
MR. ROOS: If you satisfy your obligations under this agreement, what is your understanding of what the government will do?
GARY WANG: The government will write a letter to the judge, a 5K letter, telling them the way in which I have been helpful.
GARY WANG: It's a letter that the government writes to the judge before I get sentenced that describes my conduct.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. ROOS: What is your understanding about whether the government makes any recommendation about your sentencing in that letter?
GARY WANG: It does not.
GARY WANG: The judge.
MR. ROOS: If you were to violate your agreement by not telling the truth, what do you understand would happen to your agreement?
GARY WANG: The agreement would have no effect, that it would effectively be torn up.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Fifty years.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Ideally, no prison time.
MR. ROOS: Just to be clear, before you're sentenced, you expect the government to submit a 5K letter, is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Objection.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Overruled.
GARY WANG: Yes.
GARY WANG: Because it would be helpful during sentencing.
GARY WANG: No.
MR. ROOS: Sorry. Just to be clear about my question, which was not clear, will the government, based on what you know, make a specific sentencing recommendation?
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: It will not.
GARY WANG: No.
GARY WANG: Telling the truth.
CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. EVERDELL:
MR. EVERDELL: Good afternoon, Mr. Wang.
I would like to discuss with you some of the different business relationships that Alameda had with FTX.
GARY WANG: OK.
MR. EVERDELL: You said that Alameda served as a market maker on the FTX exchange, correct?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Market makers make offers to buy and sell a particular asset at a certain price, is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: They ensure that there is always an available buyer or seller of a certain asset?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: They provide liquidity and make the trades on the exchange flow smoothly?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Exchanges like FTX rely on market makers to provide that liquidity, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Alameda was I think the very first market maker on FTX, is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And for a period of time when FTX began operating, in 2019, it was the only market maker, wasn't it?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: That meant that at the beginning Alameda was on one side or the other of almost all trades on FTX, is that right?
GARY WANG: For a short while, yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And Alameda's role as a market maker on FTX was described in documents that FTX put out to the public, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Alameda did not remain the only market maker on FTX, correct?
GARY WANG: Correct.
MR. EVERDELL: In fact, it was always the goal to attract other market makers to FTX so that Alameda wasn't the only one?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And by 2022, there were many market makers besides Alameda, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Now, one thing that Alameda did as a market maker was it facilitated access to stablecoins, is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: You mentioned stablecoin is just a cryptocurrency that's pegged to an asset, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: If FTX didn't have enough of a particular stablecoin on hand to satisfy a customer's withdrawal request, Alameda would go out and purchase that stablecoin and satisfy the customer's withdrawal, right?
GARY WANG: Yes. Either purchase it or go through the stablecoin issuer by depositing dollars to a stablecoin issuer and getting back the stablecoin.
MR. EVERDELL: Another service that Alameda performed is a market maker was providing FTX customers with access to new cryptocurrencies, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: New cryptocurrencies are created all the time?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: So FTX customers might want to be able to buy those new coins on the exchange?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: So Alameda would submit offers for those new tokens before they were officially listed?
GARY WANG: At the same time it's being listed, yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Simultaneous with their listing?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And FTX customers could start trading on those tokens immediately when they were available for sale on FTX?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: I think you mentioned backstop liquidity providers in your testimony, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Alameda also served as a backstop liquidity provider on FTX, is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Backstop liquidity providers agreed to buy assets that are held by users whose accounts are losing too much money, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And that protects the rest of the FTX customers from incurring losses, right?
GARY WANG: Yes. As well as FTX itself.
MR. EVERDELL: And FTX itself?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: The liquidity provider will step in to purchase those assets of the failing customer?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And Alameda was not the only backstop liquidity provider on the FTX exchange?
GARY WANG: Yes, correct, it was not the only one.
MR. EVERDELL: But Alameda did agree to buy the assets even if other backstop liquidity providers could not?
GARY WANG: Correct.
MR. EVERDELL: So the backstop liquidity provider of last resort, correct?
GARY WANG: Yes. Not only a last resort, but also last resort, yes.
MR. EVERDELL: But they would agree to step in if nobody else could buy the assets?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Now, let me ask you about some of the things you testified about.
You testified about certain, I think you called them special privileges that Alameda had on FTX, is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And they were coded into the code base?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And you were one of the people who did that coding, you said?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And Nishad was another?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: One of them you talked about was the allow-negative function, is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: I think you said that allowed customers to withdraw even beyond their balance, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: It even allowed the balance to go negative if need be, right?
GARY WANG: Yeah, if it's enabled to the new accounts.
MR. EVERDELL: And I think you said that that flag was coded into the database sometime in 2019?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And it was applied to Alameda's accounts also in 2019?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Now, you, I think, testified that the feature allowed Alameda to withdraw funds, regardless of the amount of funds in its account, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And it allowed Alameda to carry a negative balance?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Now, isn't it true that the reason this feature was implemented was to facilitate Alameda's market-making functions?
GARY WANG: It was for paying for its expenses and for doing stablecoin conversions.
MR. EVERDELL: As we discussed, those stablecoin conversions were part of Alameda's market-making functions.
GARY WANG: The stablecoin conversions wasn't really market making per se. It was for facilitating customers' money to do a deposit and withdrawal, different forms of stablecoins for USD.
MR. EVERDELL: Mr. Wang, do you recall discussing this topic with the prosecutors, the allow-negative function?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: In particular, do you recall speaking to the prosecutors on November 17?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: That was one of the first times you spoke to the prosecutors?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And do you recall at that time being asked about the allow-negative function?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Isn't it true that at that meeting there were the -- the prosecutors were there, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And the FBI agents were there, correct?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And you there as well of course?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And you were proffering to the government at that meeting, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: This was your attempt --
JUDGE KAPLAN: Could we get to the point.
MR. EVERDELL: Yes, your Honor.
MR. EVERDELL: Isn't it true, Mr. Wang, that at that meeting you told the prosecutors that the allow-negative flag was added to Alameda as part of their role as a market maker?
GARY WANG: I don't remember exactly what words I said.
MR. EVERDELL: Let's see if we can refresh your recollection.
MR. EVERDELL: Let's put up on the screen, if we could, what's been marked for identification as 3585-009. This is just for the witness. Go to page 3 and blow up the last paragraph.
MR. EVERDELL: If we could read the first sentence, Mr. Wang.
JUDGE KAPLAN: To yourself.
MR. EVERDELL: To yourself.
GARY WANG: OK.
MR. EVERDELL: You've read it?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Does that refresh your recollection about whether you told the prosecutors at your meeting on November 17 that the allow-negative flag was added to Alameda as part of their role as a market maker?
GARY WANG: I mean -- I don't remember if I said exactly this or not.
MR. EVERDELL: You don't remember whether you said it or not?
GARY WANG: No.
MR. EVERDELL: Is it true that that's what's said there?
JUDGE KAPLAN: Sustained.
And don't do that again, Mr. Everdell.
MR. EVERDELL: Yes, your Honor.
We will take that down.
JUDGE KAPLAN: The jury will disregard that question.
MR. EVERDELL: You also, I think, spoke to the prosecutors again on August 31, isn't that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And were you -- I believe you were again asked about the allow-negative flag at that meeting as well?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And isn't it true that at that meeting you also told the prosecutors that the allow-negative flag was there because it was necessary from when you converted between stablecoins and that this was a part of Alameda's market-making functions?
GARY WANG: I don't remember if I used the words market-making functions or not, but I definitely did say the first parts.
MR. EVERDELL: You said the first part, but you don't recall saying that it was part of their market-making functions?
GARY WANG: I may well have, but I don't remember.
MR. EVERDELL: Let me see if I can refresh your recollection.
MR. EVERDELL: If we can pull up please what's been marked for identification as 3585-025.
If we could go to page 7 of that document, the bottom, the second paragraph.
MR. EVERDELL: If you could read that to yourself, Mr. Wang.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Does that refresh your recollection about whether or not you told the prosecutors, on August 31 of 2023, that in order to do a stablecoin conversion that it was -- that the allow-negative flag was necessary for that and that this was part of Alameda's market-making function?
JUDGE KAPLAN: Sustained. Form.
MR. EVERDELL: I'll break it up.
MR. EVERDELL: Do you recall saying to the government -- does it refresh your recollection that you told the government that the allow-negative flag was necessary for converting between stablecoins?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And does it refresh your recollection that you also told the government that this was part of Alameda's market-making function?
GARY WANG: I don't know if I used those exact words or not. I may have said market making. I may have also said for the functionality of the exchange.
MR. EVERDELL: Take that down.
MR. EVERDELL: Being able to go negative was necessary so that Alameda could satisfy stablecoin requests, isn't that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: To provide stablecoins to customers, Alameda sometimes had to withdraw one stablecoin from the exchange and convert it to another and then put the new stablecoin back onto the exchange, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And to do that Alameda sometimes had to go negative in its balance, is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And Alameda wasn't the only customer that could go negative in a particular coin, isn't that right?
GARY WANG: I'm sorry. Can you repeat that question.
MR. EVERDELL: FTX is a margin exchange, isn't that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: So customers that are engaging in margin trading have to go negative in particular coins when they borrow things that they don't have, correct?
GARY WANG: If they have spot margin enabled, yes.
MR. EVERDELL: If they have spot margin enabled, and they borrow an asset that they don't have, they will go negative with the coins, is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Now, I'll return to that in a minute, but I want to get to another function that you discussed.
One of the other special privileges you discussed was the line of credit, correct?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: You said that at one point Alameda had a $65 billion line of credit?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And you said that that allowed Alameda to effectively borrow unlimited amounts of -- from the FTX exchange because it had unlimited collateral, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Isn't it also true that the line of credit?
JUDGE KAPLAN: I'm sorry. Excuse me.
Because it had unlimited collateral?
GARY WANG: It has the $65 billion of collateral so it could -- because it had that and it also had the can-withdraw-below-borrow column set on their accounts. In addition to being able to withdraw because of allow negative, they could also withdraw a large amount of funds because they had the line for the -- in addition to having the allow-negative flag sets, which would allows them to drop funds, they also had the large line of credit, and they had the can-withdraw-below-borrow flags set under accounts.
JUDGE KAPLAN: When you referred to collateral a minute ago, it was to the line of credit, is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Go ahead.
MR. EVERDELL: The line of credit could function as collateral, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Now, that large line of credit that you discussed was also originally provided for a market-making purpose, is that correct?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: As a primary market maker, Alameda had to act as the buyer in a lot of trades, as we discussed, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: That meant it often had to borrow funds on margin to make purchases as its function as a market maker?
GARY WANG: Well, it wasn't borrowing on margin because it did not have spot margin enabled, so it could not be borrowing spot tokens.
MR. EVERDELL: But it did have to make a number of trades on a day-to-day basis as a market maker?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And if it was making so many trades as the primary market maker, it might exceed the collateral it had posted if it were making so many trades?
GARY WANG: If they were all going in one direction, yes.
MR. EVERDELL: I think you testified about some conversations that you had with Sam about this issue, right, about the size of the line of credit?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: I think you said that originally you -- it needed to be increased, right, as things -- as time went on?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And at first it started with smaller amounts, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Maybe in the size of a million or so, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And then you'd hit that limit, correct?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: So you have to increase it again?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And there were a couple of these iterations where it hit the limit, isn't that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And so, ultimately, Sam asked you to increase the limit so that this wouldn't happen again, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
(Continued on next page)
BY MR. EVERDELL:
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. And so you said that the number eventually picked was 65 billion; is that right?
GARY WANG: Well, the first——the first time, we picked a number so high that it would never be hit, that kind of number was picked was 1 billion, and then it was hit again, and then the number picked was 65 billion.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. But the goal of doing this was simply to get to a point where it wouldn't——it wouldn't impact the trading activity, right?
GARY WANG: It would not impact Alameda placing orders on the exchange for market making.
MR. EVERDELL: In its role as a market maker, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And you don't recall who picked the 65 billion number, do you?
GARY WANG: It was——I mean, it was one of the two of us.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. But in fact, the amount of Alameda's actual borrowing on the exchange for itself never reached 65 billion, right?
GARY WANG: Correct.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. So that was just sort of a notional number to make sure that this problem of butting up against the ceiling didn't happen again, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And what was more typical for Alameda in terms of the amount of borrowing against the line of credit?
GARY WANG: Well, do you mean the amount that it was actually borrowing or owning the——also including open orders and being used for those?
MR. EVERDELL: Including open orders.
GARY WANG: Including open orders, I'm not sure. I wasn't keeping track of the total size of Alameda open orders.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. All right. Now you also——I'll come back to that one as well.
I just want to talk briefly to you about the exemption from auto-liquidation, okay?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. I think you testified that Alameda would not be liquidated; is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. And I think you said that, you know, if certain situations arise and there's enough of a negative balance, that there would normally be a customer liquidation, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: But that would not happen with Alameda, right?
GARY WANG: Correct.
MR. EVERDELL: Because of the way the coding worked, right?
GARY WANG: Correct.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. So the exemption from auto-deletion, again, was originally for a market-making purpose, wasn't it?
GARY WANG: The——for what?
MR. EVERDELL: For a market-making purpose.
GARY WANG: What purpose was for market making?
MR. EVERDELL: I'm sorry. One moment.
MR. EVERDELL: I meant to say auto-liquidation. I misspoke. Originally the auto-liquidation feature was for market-making purposes, right?
GARY WANG: The automatic liquidation system on FTX?
MR. EVERDELL: Yes.
GARY WANG: Well, it was for——it was to protect customers from clawbacks.
MR. EVERDELL: Let me rephrase the question.
The exemption from the auto-liquidation that Alameda had was originally to serve its market-making purpose, right?
GARY WANG: So the exemption had a few purposes. One was to prevent Alameda from losing money if its position was all liquidated at once; and two, it was also to protect the market from giant price movements caused by Alameda's giant position being liquidated.
MR. EVERDELL: Let's talk about the first one now. It was to protect the exchange. And it's true that, as we discussed, Alameda was a backstop liquidity provider, right, of last resort, right?
MR. EVERDELL: Right?
JUDGE KAPLAN: Sustained, form.
MR. EVERDELL: Sure. Alameda functioned as a backstop liquidity provider, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And it had to act as a buyer in a lot of trades for that reason, right?
GARY WANG: Buyer? I mean, liquidated——sometimes people would get liquidated and sometimes Alameda would provide the liquidation.
MR. EVERDELL: And sometimes it was the only market maker that was willing to make those purchases to effect the liquidation, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And if Alameda were liquidated, it's possible that FTX would run out of buyers in a liquidation scenario, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. And if that happened, there would be risk then that other customers would have to buy assets that they had not signed up to buy, right?
Let me see if I can rephrase. If Alameda wasn't willing to buy up the liquidation assets and nobody else was willing to, then the assets might have to be spread to the other customers on the exchange and they would suffer a loss, right?
GARY WANG: I think it's not true for spots, for spot assets. I think that is true for futures, yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. But if Alameda were liquidated, they couldn't serve that function, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. And in fact, they——I don't think they were the only customer that was exempted from auto-liquidation, right?
JUDGE KAPLAN: The question is you don't think that? Rephrase the question.
MR. EVERDELL: Sure.
MR. EVERDELL: Alameda wasn't the only customer on FTX to be exempted from auto-liquidation, right?
GARY WANG: Well, other accounts were manually liquidated.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. I'll move on.
MR. EVERDELL: One moment, your Honor.
MR. EVERDELL: Sorry. One further question about the line of credit we talked about before.
GARY WANG: Okay.
MR. EVERDELL: That was for Alameda's info@ account, correct?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: That was I think account No. 9 that you talked about before?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. And you said that was Alameda's main trading account, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. All right. Now you testified also that one of the other features was that Alameda had a bit faster trading; is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. And that was I think the result of not having to go through a program called Cloudflare, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. Cloudflare is designed to prevent fraudulent logins, right, of people getting onto the exchange?
GARY WANG: Primarily it was used for——it was used for a few things. It was used to prevent DDoS attacks, so to protect against distributed denial-of-service attacks, where malicious users would try to——would try to disrupt FTX by sending large number of requests from different computers to try to take down FTX.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. Well, so Cloudflare served a security function, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. And if you had to go through Cloudflare, that might slow it down a tiny fraction, right?
GARY WANG: A few milliseconds, yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. But because Alameda was a trusted party, they didn't have to use Cloudflare, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. And FTX trusted Alameda not to, you know, violate the terms of the exchange, right?
JUDGE KAPLAN: Sustained.
MR. EVERDELL: Well, it didn't——it didn't feel like it needed to have Alameda use Cloudflare.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Sustained.
MR. EVERDELL: All right. Well, as of October 2022, there were other customers who could bypass Cloudflare too, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. So Alameda wasn't the only customer who could do this.
GARY WANG: "This" being bypass Cloudflare or having slightly faster auto-executions?
MR. EVERDELL: Bypass Cloudflare.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. I'm going to return to those in a bit, but I'm going to move on to something different, okay?
GARY WANG: Okay.
MR. EVERDELL: All right. I want to talk briefly about Alameda's role as a customer on FTX, okay?
GARY WANG: Okay.
MR. EVERDELL: All right. You just said that Alameda had a trading account on FTX?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And its primary trading account was called the info@ account, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. And Alameda engaged in margin trading on FTX?
GARY WANG: Did not——well, the main account did not engage in spot margin trading. They traded futures.
MR. EVERDELL: But there were——Alameda had dozens or hundreds of subaccounts, didn't it?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. And some of those subaccounts had margin trading enabled.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: So those subaccounts engaged in margin trading on FTX.
GARY WANG: Well, those subaccounts——so there were a few subaccounts involved in this. One of them had "Allow Negative" sets and another subaccount had small-margin lending enabled, and assets were transferred from the "Allow Negative" subaccount to the spot margin trading subaccount to the users.
MR. EVERDELL: I believe my question was simply: Did Alameda, in one of its subaccounts, engage in margin trading?
GARY WANG: Well, it didn't——I don't think either of those two accounts borrowed on the spot margin or——one of them was "Allow Negative," the other one engaged in spot margin lending.
MR. EVERDELL: All right. Well, you said that Alameda borrowed money from the exchange, yes?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And you spoke to Sam early on about Alameda's borrowing from FTX; is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. I think you recalled a conversation in about 2019 or 2020; is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And you recall noticing that Alameda had a large negative account balance on FTX.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. And I think you understood the balance was at that point roughly 100 million?
GARY WANG: Are you referring to the first conversation I had with Sam or the second conversation?
MR. EVERDELL: Maybe the first conversation.
GARY WANG: The one——well, the one where the Alameda trader came up to him or the one where I brought up the issue with him?
MR. EVERDELL: The one where the trader came up to him.
GARY WANG: I think they were borrowing a hundred——yeah, about a hundred million, yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And you said that that balance you saw was bigger because you had had the conversation around FTX's revenue at the time.
GARY WANG: No. This was when a trader from Alameda came up to Sam to ask him if it's fine for Alameda to continue borrowing and——to continue borrowing, and Sam said yes because at this point Alameda's borrowing was less than FTX's trading revenue to date.
MR. EVERDELL: Right. And so that Alameda's borrowing at that point was less than FTX's trading revenue to date, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And you talked to Sam about that, right?
GARY WANG: No, that I did not talk to Sam about. It was later on, referencing this conversation that I heard, that I talked to Sam about, because at that point Alameda's negative balance had exceeded FTX's trading revenue, which was inconsistent with what I remember him saying to the Alameda trader.
MR. EVERDELL: Right. Okay. So you approached Sam and you discussed that with him on that date, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. And when was that?
GARY WANG: This was late 2019, early 2020.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. And what was Sam's response to that?
GARY WANG: Sam asked me if I was including all of Alameda's accounts on FTX, including Cottonwood Grove, and asking about including the FTT in those accounts.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. So he asked whether you were including other assets, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Including FTT, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. And you accepted that explanation?
GARY WANG: I——well, I——I said I was not including those assets, and then I redid the calculation including those assets and I told him that after including those assets, then it's now positive on FTX. And yes, I——and then——and then he said that since the net total was positive, then this was fine, and then I accepted that.
MR. EVERDELL: Right. Okay. So let's break that down. He asked you if you were including other assets, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And one of them was Cottonwood, you said?
GARY WANG: The assets held in the Cottonwood account on FTX.
MR. EVERDELL: What's Cottonwood?
GARY WANG: It's Alameda's——it's one of Alameda's subsidiary entities.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. So it's an Alameda subsidiary, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And so he pointed out some other assets that Alameda had that you hadn't been considering, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. And he said that when you include all of those assets and you tally them up, it covers the amount that Alameda is borrowing at that point, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. And you said that you accepted that from him, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. You had no reason to doubt him at the time, right?
GARY WANG: Well, I wouldn't——I wasn't sure either way if it was okay or not, but I trusted his judgment. He said it was okay, so I thought probably it was okay.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. And, well, you didn't, for example, check what the FTX terms of service said about that topic, did you?
GARY WANG: No.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. You accepted Sam's.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: All right. Okay. I'm going to return to that later too, but let's talk briefly about another role Alameda performed for the exchange, okay?
GARY WANG: Okay.
MR. EVERDELL: Let's talk very briefly about Alameda's role in receiving FTX customer fiat deposits, okay?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: All right. You said that FTX used Alameda's bank accounts to receive FTX customer cash deposits, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And FTX also processed withdrawals through those same accounts.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And that lasted until about the end of 2021; is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: That's when FTX got its own bank accounts?
GARY WANG: Around that time.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. Mr. Wang, are you aware of any instance prior to November 2022, around the time of the bankruptcy, when Alameda failed to process a customer withdrawal request?
GARY WANG: I mean, sometimes there weren't enough——sometimes wallets or bank accounts were running low and there was a delay caused by needing to——by Alameda needing to transfer money in.
MR. EVERDELL: Well, apart from those instances where Alameda needed to transfer a little money in, did it happen in those instances?
JUDGE KAPLAN: Sustained as to form.
MR. EVERDELL: I'll rephrase. Did Alameda transfer money on those occasions?
GARY WANG: Yes, after——sometimes it took a few hours, but yes.
MR. EVERDELL: But it would take about a few hours, you said, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: So pretty quickly that would be resolved.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. Apart from what you just described, prior to November 2022, around the time of the bankruptcy that you described, are you aware of any instance where Alameda failed to process a customer withdrawal request?
GARY WANG: Not for longer than a day.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. All right. Now just talk briefly about the fiat@ ledger, just the mechanics of it.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. You testified about the fiat@ ledger, correct?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Did you create that ledger?
GARY WANG: Either I created it or Nishad created it.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. Now once the fiat funds were deposited into the Alameda accounts, a few things could happen to them, right? They could stay in the bank account, right?
MR. EVERDELL: I'll rephrase, your Honor, if you want.
JUDGE KAPLAN: All right. Go ahead.
MR. EVERDELL: Once the fiat funds were deposited in the Alameda bank accounts, they could stay in the bank accounts, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. Then the fiat@ account would reflect the full amount of cash that stayed in the Alameda account, right?
GARY WANG: If Alameda never withdrew funds from the account, yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. Correct. And the second possibility was the cash could be converted to stablecoin, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And Alameda could take the customer's cash deposit and buy the stablecoin, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And then Alameda would send those stablecoin to FTX.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: And if it did that, the fiat@ account would become less negative at that point, right?
GARY WANG: No. The——if it did that, the bank account would have less money in it, but the fiat@ftx.com account would still have the same balance as before.
MR. EVERDELL: Understood. Okay. But the stablecoin would be transferred to FTX, right?
GARY WANG: The stablecoin would be deposited into——Alameda would take those stablecoin and deposit them into Alameda's own account on FTX, so the fiat@ account could still be negative but the Alameda account would be——would now be more positive.
MR. EVERDELL: Alameda's own bank account.
GARY WANG: No. Alameda's account on FTX.
MR. EVERDELL: Alameda's account on FTX, because it would have stablecoin on that account.
GARY WANG: There would now be fewer dollars in Alameda's bank account, there would be more dollars——there would be more stablecoin in FTX's wallets, the number in the database at fiat would stay the same, and the number in FTX's database for Alameda would increase.
MR. EVERDELL: Understood. All right. And it was your understanding that that's ideally how the situation should have happened, where it was converted to stablecoin?
MR. EVERDELL: I'm sorry, your Honor?
JUDGE KAPLAN: I'm sorry.
MR. EVERDELL: I think there was an objection.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Sustained as to form.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. I'll rephrase.
BY MR. EVERDELL:
MR. EVERDELL: And was it your understanding that the customer fiat deposits that went to the bank account would normally be converted to stablecoin?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. But there was no rule that that had to happen, right?
GARY WANG: I'm not sure if there was a——it was explicitly stated anywhere on the website, but it was mentioned to auditors by Nishad at one point.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. Before we return to those, I just have a few smaller questions, because I think we're getting toward the end of our time.
MR. EVERDELL: But I'll do a few small things, your Honor, if I could.
MR. EVERDELL: First, Mr. Wang, you testified earlier, I think it was the day before, that you met Sam at camp; is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: That was a math camp for gifted students, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Let me talk just briefly about your role at FTX, if I could.
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: All right. You were the chief technical officer; is that right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: That's the CTO, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes. Well, this part is anyway.
MR. EVERDELL: All right. I'll move on.
MR. EVERDELL: So your role was focused on the code and the code base, right?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay.
JUDGE KAPLAN: It's been answered, but let's stop that, please.
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. Understood, your Honor.
MR. EVERDELL: You were not focused on the business side of the business?
JUDGE KAPLAN: What part of "let's stop that" was obscure?
MR. EVERDELL: Okay. All right.
MR. EVERDELL: Let's talk briefly about the growth of FTX, okay?
GARY WANG: Okay.
MR. EVERDELL: Once FTX launched in 2019, fair to say it grew very quickly?
GARY WANG: Yes.
MR. EVERDELL: Do you know how many employees it had when you started in 2019?
GARY WANG: When we started, it was just Sam and I working directly on FTX, and like——and then a couple other people.
MR. EVERDELL: And then by 2022, how many did you have, roughly?
JUDGE KAPLAN: Counsel, we really did cover all of this, and it's uncontroversial, and if we're really going on because you want to get right to the dot of 2, I think we can break seven minutes early and let you start off afresh on Tuesday.
MR. EVERDELL: Sure. That sounds fine, your Honor.
JUDGE KAPLAN: All right, folks. Have a wonderful weekend and we'll see you Tuesday at 9:30.
(Continued on next page)
(Jury not present)
JUDGE KAPLAN: Okay. Be seated, please.
What's up?
JUDGE KAPLAN: I'm sure that will come as a relief.
MR. ROOS: So he's on cross. We're not going to talk to him. I wanted to mention the two exceptions to that. One is, he's going to speak with some agents just about what time to appear on Tuesday; and the second is, to the extent he needs hotel or travel arrangements extended past this week, we're going to deal with that. But it won't be me. It will be someone who does those things. I just wanted to put those on the record.
In terms of his cross-examination, there were several times Mr. Everdell said "we'll come back to this," or, "I'm going to come back to this further." I just want to put a marker down that we intend to object to that if we're just repeating things or revisiting topics on Tuesday when we pick up. It sort of seemed like he wants a second shot at a bunch of things he already crossed on.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Well, look, we take these things one thing at a time. My position on repeating stuff is pretty clear at this point, but I can imagine coming back to a subject and simply directing the witness's attention to what the subject is about to be and then asking new questions, and I'm not going to have a problem with that.
MR. ROOS: Thank you, your Honor.
And then the last thing is, yesterday evening your Honor asked about the schedule for next week.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Yes.
MR. ROOS: So we'll have the conclusion of the cross of Mr. Wang on Tuesday, and then we intend to start Ms. Ellison, Caroline Ellison.
JUDGE KAPLAN: One other thing I may wish to raise with you.
There is something I want to bring to the attention of counsel, and we have plenty of time, but it occurs to me to utter the phrase "buried facts doctrine" and to put in your mind the question of whether it has any relevance here or anything analogous to it, and whether it's going to affect the charge. So I leave that to you. But if you Google "buried facts doctrine," you'll find out what I'm talking about, if you don't know it already.
JUDGE KAPLAN: Okay. Thank you.
MR. COHEN: Thank you, your Honor.
COURT CLERK: All rise.
(Adjourned to October 10, 2023, at 9:30 a.m.)