The 30 (bl)under 30
Key crypto bungler wished she took more risks: Forbes
Disgraced FTX enabler Caroline Ellison managed to get on Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list in 2021 after writing that she would advise her younger self to “be less risk-averse and believe in herself more,” according to the magazine.
The 29-year-old CEO of Alameda Research — who allegedly made risky bets by using billions of dollars in customer deposits that were entrusted to the nowbankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX — is one of the key players in a financial scandal that has elicited comparisons to Enron and the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme.
FTX and Alameda Research are sister companies founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, who promoted Ellison to CEO of the trading firm last year after plucking her from another company in 2018.
Along with eight other young tech executives, they ran the companies while living together in Bankman-Fried’s $40 million penthouse in the Bahamas.
Last year, the on-again, off-again girlfriend of Bankman-Fried — whose net worth plummeted from around $17 billion to zero virtually overnight after his empire collapsed — applied to make one of Forbes’ lists of 30 movers and shakers under the age of 30.
The application asks what advice they would give their younger selves.
“I would tell her to be less risk-averse and believe in herself more,” Ellison wrote in a 2021 Forbes interview that had not been published until Friday. The publication placed Ellison and co-CEO Sam Trabucco on its “30 Under 30” list for the finance sector.
In a profile of the two picks. Forbes praised Ellison for presenting a paper to her MIT professor dad analyzing stuffed animals when she was 8, and going on to earn a bachelor’s from Stanford and land a job at Jane Street.
Forbes published a new feature story about Ellison on Friday, which struck a different tone, calling her a “quiet math nerd” who “climbed the crypto hierarchy until it all went bust.”
In May, Ellison told a podcast that “being comfortable with risk is very important,” Friday’s feature recounted. Being more risk-averse would have likely helped Ellison and Bankman-Fried avoid their current predicament.
More than 1 million creditors are seeking damages from FTX and Alameda Research, according to filings, which also show that Ellison’s hedge fund gave Bankman-Fried a personal loan of $1 billion.
Ellison was not available for comment.