Chapter 30 Further Reading

Essential Primary Sources

United States v. Samuel Bankman-Fried, Case No. 22-cr-673 (S.D.N.Y. 2023). The criminal trial transcript is the single most important primary source for understanding the FTX fraud. Key testimony from Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh provides forensic detail about the commingling of funds, the software backdoor, and the preparation of misleading balance sheets. Trial transcripts and exhibits were published by Inner City Press and other outlets covering the proceedings. The sentencing memoranda from both the prosecution and defense are also essential reading.

Allison, Ian. "Divisions in Sam Bankman-Fried's Crypto Empire Blur on His Trading Titan Alameda's Balance Sheet." CoinDesk, November 2, 2022. The article that triggered FTX's collapse. Allison's reporting on Alameda Research's leaked balance sheet — revealing the concentration in FTT tokens — is a masterclass in financial journalism. The article is short, precise, and devastating. Required reading for anyone studying financial transparency.

FTX Debtors' First Day Declaration, In re FTX Trading Ltd., Case No. 22-11068 (Bankr. D. Del. November 17, 2022). John J. Ray III's initial filing as CEO of the FTX bankruptcy estate. This document contains the extraordinary statement comparing FTX unfavorably to Enron and provides the first comprehensive overview of the corporate dysfunction, including the absence of governance, the emoji-based expense approval system, and the lack of reliable financial records.

Ontario Securities Commission. "QuadrigaCX: A Review by Staff of the Ontario Securities Commission." 2020. The OSC's investigative report on QuadrigaCX. Methodical and detailed, it traces how Gerald Cotten operated the exchange as a fractional reserve, the misuse of customer funds, and the "Ponzi scheme" characterization. Essential reading for understanding custodial fraud in crypto.

SEC. "Report of Investigation Pursuant to Section 21(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934: The DAO." Release No. 81207, July 25, 2017. The SEC's landmark report concluding that DAO tokens were securities. This document established the regulatory framework for evaluating token offerings and remains the foundational reference for securities classification in crypto.

Books

Lewis, Michael. Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon. W.W. Norton, 2023. Lewis had unprecedented access to Sam Bankman-Fried in the months before FTX's collapse — he was writing what was intended to be a favorable profile. The resulting book is unusual: a portrait of Bankman-Fried from the perspective of a journalist who watched his subject's empire disintegrate in real time. Lewis's account is more sympathetic to Bankman-Fried than most observers consider warranted, which makes it a useful counterpoint to the prosecution's narrative. Read it critically.

Faux, Zeke. Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall. Crown, 2023. A Bloomberg journalist's investigation into the broader crypto ecosystem, with significant coverage of the Tether stablecoin, the 2022 contagion, and the FTX collapse. Faux is skeptical of crypto's promises and does not attempt balance — this is investigative journalism from a critical perspective. The chapters on Tether and on the human cost of the 2022 collapse (particularly in developing economies) are excellent.

Nilsson, Kim (writing as WizSec). Various technical analyses of the Mt. Gox hack, 2014-present. Kim Nilsson, a software developer, conducted the most detailed independent forensic analysis of the Mt. Gox theft, tracing stolen bitcoin across the blockchain and identifying the likely attack vectors. His work, published on the WizSec blog, is technically rigorous and was cited by the bankruptcy trustee. Essential for anyone interested in on-chain forensic methodology.

Castor, Amy. Coverage of QuadrigaCX, FTX, and other crypto failures, 2019-present. Independent journalist Amy Castor has provided some of the most incisive coverage of crypto failures, combining financial analysis with investigative reporting. Her coverage of QuadrigaCX was among the first to question the "lost keys" narrative, and her ongoing documentation of the FTX bankruptcy proceedings is detailed and well-sourced.

Academic and Technical Papers

Buterin, Vitalik. "Having a Safe CEX: Proof of Solvency and Beyond." November 2022. Written in the immediate aftermath of FTX's collapse, Buterin's blog post provides the most rigorous technical analysis of proof-of-reserves approaches, including Merkle tree proofs, their limitations, and how zero-knowledge proofs could improve them. Buterin is characteristically honest about the gap between what proof of reserves proves and what users assume it proves. Essential technical reading for Case Study 2.

Mohan, Gandal, and Halaburda. "Can We Predict the Winner in a Market with Network Effects? Competition in Cryptocurrency Market." Games 5, no. 3 (2014): 88-117. Early academic analysis of competition among cryptocurrency exchanges, relevant to understanding why Mt. Gox achieved such dominant market share and what the risks of market concentration in exchange services are.

Mehar, M. Irfan, et al. "Understanding a Revolutionary and Flawed Grand Experiment in Blockchain: The DAO Attack." Journal of Cases on Information Technology 21, no. 1 (2019): 19-32. A thorough academic case study of The DAO attack, covering the technical vulnerability, the social response, the fork decision, and the governance implications. Suitable for classroom use.

Aramonte, Sirio, Wenqian Huang, and Andreas Schrimpf. "DeFi Risks and the Decentralisation Illusion." BIS Quarterly Review, December 2021. The Bank for International Settlements' analysis of decentralization in DeFi, including the argument that many "decentralized" protocols have significant centralization in governance, development, and oracle dependencies. Published before the 2022 collapse, it reads as prescient analysis of the vulnerabilities that were later exposed.

Barbon, Andrea, and Angelo Ranaldo. "On the Quality of Cryptocurrency Markets: Centralized versus Decentralized Exchanges." Swiss Finance Institute Research Paper No. 21-26, 2021. Comparative analysis of centralized and decentralized exchanges, covering trade execution quality, costs, and risks. Relevant to the chapter's argument that decentralized alternatives existed but were underutilized.

Journalism and Investigations

Michaels, Dave, and Elaine Yu. "Inside the FTX Investigation." Wall Street Journal, multiple articles, 2022-2024. The Wall Street Journal's investigative coverage of FTX, from the initial collapse through the trial and sentencing. Particularly strong on the regulatory dimension — how FTX interacted with the SEC, CFTC, and members of Congress, and why regulatory scrutiny failed to prevent the fraud.

Yaffe-Bellany, David, and Matthew Goldstein. "They Lived Together, Worked Together, and Lost Billions Together: Inside Sam Bankman-Fried's Circle." New York Times, multiple articles, 2022-2024. Detailed reporting on the personal dynamics among the FTX inner circle, including the Bankman-Fried/Ellison relationship, the shared penthouse in the Bahamas, and the group dynamic that enabled and concealed the fraud. The human dimension of the story.

Versprille, Allyson, and Tom Schoenberg. "Three Arrows Capital Founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies." Bloomberg, multiple articles, 2022-2023. Bloomberg's coverage of the 3AC collapse, including the founders' flight from Singapore, their subsequent arrest, and the liquidation proceedings. Strong on the counterparty web — who 3AC had borrowed from, how much, and what the terms were.

Documentaries and Multimedia

"Trust No One: The Hunt for the Crypto King." Netflix, 2022. A documentary about the QuadrigaCX collapse, following the investigation into Gerald Cotten's death, the missing funds, and the affected customers. Accessible and engaging, though it focuses more on the mystery of Cotten's death than on the structural failures. Good as an introduction; supplement with the OSC report for the full picture.

"Dead Man's Switch: A Crypto Mystery." 2021. An earlier documentary treatment of the QuadrigaCX case, focusing on the affected customers and their search for answers. Provides the human dimension that the OSC report necessarily omits.

Ongoing Resources

Chainalysis Blog and Annual Crime Report. Chainalysis publishes an annual "Crypto Crime Report" that quantifies illicit activity in crypto — including fraud, theft, ransomware, and sanctions evasion. The data is drawn from Chainalysis's blockchain analytics platform and represents the most comprehensive quantitative overview of crypto crime available. The methodological limitations (what chain analysis can and cannot detect) are worth understanding.

Rekt.news. A community-maintained leaderboard and forensic analysis of DeFi hacks and exploits. Each incident is analyzed in detail — the vulnerability, the attack, the losses, and the lessons. The site's tone is irreverent, but the technical analysis is generally sound. Useful for staying current on smart contract security incidents that do not make mainstream news.

Molly White. "Web3 Is Going Just Great." 2021-present. An ongoing timeline of crypto failures, scams, and controversies, maintained by software engineer and Wikipedia editor Molly White. The framing is skeptical, and the selection is curated to emphasize failures, but the documentation is thorough and well-sourced. Useful as a reference even for readers who do not share the editorial perspective.