727 FinanceNetflix's new series "The Altruists," adapted from the FTX collapse, features the former chief operating officer speaking out for the first time: the love narrative in the show is utterly absurd, the real-life SBF could not look others in the eye, and on the night the $8 billion funding gap was exposed, she completely broke down.
Original author: Vivi Lin, NYTimes
Original translation: jk, Odaily Planet Daily
In 2022, the cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed, causing investors to lose billions of dollars and permanently changing the public's perception of digital currencies.
Soon afterward, it emerged that FTX CEO and Effective Altruism adherent Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) had illegally misappropriated billions of dollars of the exchange's funds to support his affiliated hedge fund Alameda Research. The fund was nominally managed by his ex-girlfriend and colleague Caroline Ellison.
Now, the case has been adapted by Netflix into a new series, The Altruists, promoted as "a toxic love story inspired by a real fraud case." However, this adaptation has left those who lived through the FTX collapse shocked and unable to accept it.
Netflix's new series
Former FTX Chief Operating Officer Constance Wang said that trying to present the crisis from the angle of a love story is simply absurd.
"SBF's entire goal was to change the world, create impact, and do good. Love, romantic relationships, and family seemed secondary to him."
"As for that romantic plot of 'you and me against the world'? Absolutely fucking impossible," Wang said in her first exclusive interview with the New York Post about the FTX collapse.
Constance is played in the series by actress Madison Hu. However, when a friend showed her the trailer over breakfast, she could not even finish watching it.
"I watched about 40 seconds and I literally physically vomited, because it made me extremely uncomfortable," she said.
She also said bluntly that the love-centered plot setup is ridiculous.
"For a long time at the company, we had no idea they were dating, or even that Sam was capable of being in a relationship, because he was always working," Wang said.
"I had a group chat with a few employees I was closer to. At the time I was very shocked, so I asked them: 'Did you know about this?' They replied: 'No, we thought you knew.'"
Constance's FTX period
The Altruists tells the story of SBF, Ellison, and their followers trying to transform the financial system according to the ideals of effective altruism, only to fail in the end. They claimed they wanted to use wealth and intelligence to make the world a better place.
However, SBF bought a $35 million party mansion in the Bahamas and misappropriated $8 billion of FTX investors' funds for Alameda Research, ultimately causing the entire project to collapse. Because U.S. federal law does not let someone off the hook just because they claim they will do good in the future, SBF is now serving a 25-year sentence for fraud and money laundering.
Constance said she attended several gatherings hosted by SBF and the effective altruism circle, but found that she did not fit into that group. The effective altruism movement is also closely linked to AI company Anthropic and other tech giants.
"They really are very smart, and they talk about things like math, physics, biology. If it were a Friday or Saturday night dinner, I would rather talk about lighter topics. But for them, these are the light topics."
"Occasionally hanging out once or twice is fine, but over time it becomes hard to fit in."
FTX's core team had about 10 people, who lived with SBF and Ellison in the Bahamas. According to previous CoinDesk reporting, these people at one point "were all in romantic relationships with one another."
Ellison, who was also prosecuted by U.S. federal prosecutors after FTX's collapse, admitted in a now-deleted Tumblr post in 2020 that she had experience with polyamory.
She wrote at the time: "When I first started trying polyamory, I thought it was a complete break from my past traditional views. But honestly, now I think the only acceptable form of polyamory should be something like 'the harem of an ancient Chinese emperor.'"
However, Constance said she had never personally witnessed such steamy scenes.
"Honestly, before seeing the word 'orgy' in news reports, I didn't even know what it meant," she said. "I even Googled it."
Instead, she believes "the company was just a bunch of nerds," and most of the gatherings she attended involved playing chess and board games.
It is still unclear which kind of party scene Netflix actually used in the series. Netflix also did not respond to a request for comment. However, Constance believes that, based on what has been made public so far, the producers have clearly taken considerable artistic license.
She pointed out that the real SBF could barely maintain eye contact with others, while the SBF played by Anthony Boyle in the trailer is a confident, socially skilled entrepreneur, forming a sharp contrast.
"In 2018, when I first met Sam in Singapore, he completely could not look people in the eye when talking to them," she recalled. "He would keep staring at the floor while constantly shaking his leg."
Ellison, played by Julia Garner in the series, appears quite proactive and even somewhat aggressive in the trailer. But Constance said the real Ellison was actually "gentle" and "soft-spoken."
"She would never come across as assertive. If you asked her a question, she would pause for a moment, think, and then start answering."
Former FTX marketing manager Quinn Li, who also moved to the Bahamas and worked with SBF, likewise thought the trailer was "very, very bad."
"It adds too much romance and emotional drama, but in reality there was nowhere near that much of it. In fact, everyone was a very rational person," Li told the New York Post.
"In the trailer, I completely cannot see how smart Sam and Caroline are. They look like two silly cats in love."
Constance then recalled the decisive night of FTX's collapse in November 2022.
At the time, Binance founder CZ announced that he would sell off the FTX platform token FTT, triggering market panic. Over the following 72 hours, customers withdrew about $6 billion from FTX.
Constance was then in charge of the VIP team serving the exchange's largest trading clients. She said the message company executives passed to employees was always to stay calm.
"The internal instruction we received from Sam was: 'Let them withdraw, we're fine,'" she said.
Some loyal clients even chose to redeposit funds into FTX.
"No one, including myself, doubted what Sam told us, because we had very, very deep trust in him," Constance said.
However, when customer withdrawals began failing to arrive, the company's explanation was still a technical glitch.
"We were told: 'Oh, this is because there's a problem with the system. Please tell clients to wait patiently, we're fine.'"
It was not until around 3 a.m. that SBF finally admitted the real reason withdrawals were stuck.
"He said: 'We don't have enough money to meet all the withdrawal requests on the exchange.'"
Constance recalled: "I bolted upright in bed. I was extremely shocked, and my whole body was shaking."
SBF then invited Constance to the company's "war room." There, she saw SBF, Ellison, co-founder Gary Wang, and engineering head Nishad Singh.
"That was the first time I saw a spreadsheet listing exactly how large FTX's funding gap was. I remember it was about $8 billion."
"I was completely stunned. I was thinking: 'How could this happen? How on earth did this happen?'"
The collapse of FTX also came at a heavy cost to the entire team.Constance recalled that in her last conversation with SBF in the Bahamas, she asked him whether he truly understood what employees were going through: they were being blamed by the outside world for something they had no knowledge of, had lost their life savings, and had lost the fruits of years of hard work.
"His reaction was rather flat," she said. "I remember being unsure whether he truly grasped the severity of it all, and I couldn't help but wonder whether, when he weighed his decisions, he had ever considered the cost those decisions imposed on people."
Li added: "Sam's mistake was that he overestimated his own intelligence."
"He is indeed very smart and able to spot many opportunities in the market. But frankly, other market participants were not as easy to deceive as he imagined."
Ellison pleaded guilty after FTX's collapse and testified at trial against SBF. She was released in January this year after serving about 14 months. She now works under the alias "Carol" at a charity called Manifund in San Francisco.
FTX's collapse left an estimated 9 million customers and investors facing billions of dollars in losses.
Since then, the FTX bankruptcy liquidation team has recovered about $16.5 billion, to repay customers at least 118% of their account balances.
But the problem is that those balances were calculated based on asset prices in November 2022. At that time, Bitcoin was worth about $16,000, while today its price exceeds $80,000.
Constance has never been accused of any wrongdoing, but she is also aware that a question has always lingered outside: as FTX's chief operating officer, how could she have been completely unaware of all this?
In response, she said: "If someone wants to hide something from you, they will make sure to keep it tightly under wraps."
Constance previously oversaw FTX's global growth business and drove the company's establishment of offices in Japan, Singapore, and Dubai. She also stressed that she had put a huge amount of her own money into FTX and its related tokens.
Although her holdings once reached ten figures in dollar terms at their peak, meaning at least $1 billion, when she finally returned to Hong Kong, she had only $80,000 left.
Constance disclosed that the U.S. Department of Justice also conducted an investigation into her for about a year, but ultimately did not bring charges against her or require her to testify at SBF's trial.
"I did not possess any substantive information that could help prosecutors build a case," she said. "That basically reflects just how little I knew at the time."
Still, the entire trial process was extremely painful for her.
She recalled constantly reading trial reports and looking for whether her name was mentioned. During that period, she felt that "everything inside me, except my body, had shattered."
She fell into depression at one point and even had suicidal thoughts. It was only when some old friends reappeared in her life and gave her support that she finally emerged from that low point.
After that, she returned to entrepreneurship and co-founded the crypto trading platform Pacifica in 2025.
According to DefiLlama data, the platform's trading volume has reached $10 billion in the past month.
"I am very grateful that I not only still have my freedom, but also have the opportunity to start a company again," she said.
However, what surprised Constance greatly was that Netflix never contacted her to learn about her personal experience before creating a character based on her, and did not even try to get in touch with her.
"I specifically searched my email and found no messages from Netflix. Of course, I also received no news about the plot or the script."
"I don't know how they will portray my character. To be honest, I am a little nervous about it."
Nevertheless, Constance said she does not resent the people who once built FTX and worked alongside her.
"I don't hate Sam, and I don't hate any of them."
"I just feel sad and disappointed."