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Source: Loopy Lu
Original title: FTX Theft is: Who is the mysterious CTO Gary Wang?
In just one week, FTX, which was once the world's second largest exchange, collapsed. And larger dramas followed one after another, and FTX, which had few assets, was bizarrely hacked and stolen hundreds of millions of dollars.
Arkham Intelligence data shows that as of now, FTX attack hacker-related wallets still hold $292 million worth of ETH, $48 million worth of DAI, $44 million worth of BNB, $4 million worth of Tether on Avalanche, and $3.8 million MATIC on Polygon Matic Bridge.
11 on the morning of November 12, the user deposit values, recharge records, and transaction records have disappeared. For users who stayed behind FTX, the last glimmer of hope was almost shattered. On November 15, FTX users found that performing a login operation will return "503", and FTX can no longer log in. The
hacker appeared at the right time, which also made the market more associations about the plot. Autism Capital, a user of Twitter , who has been tracking this incident, gave a more sensational guess: the hacker is false and internal personnel are absconding with the money. Autism Capital found that the hacker's operation records do not match the time nodes when FTX disclosed information to the outside world, and the hacker's operational authority is extremely high. Some people believe that this is not as accessible to external personnel.
Some community users found that FTX's joint founder and CTO Gary Wang's Github account was still contributing code until the company went bankrupt. The active "work" situation of is also confusing.
11 On November 11, Gary Wang submitted the code 5 times. On November 10, Gary Wang submitted 19 codes. After this, there has been no code submission activity on the Gary Wang account. However, since the code is submitted to a private project, we cannot see the specific content of the submission, but it is speculated that the updated code may be FTX code. Caroline Ellison, CEO of
Alameda, once said that she herself, SBF, Gary Wang and another executive knew about FTX's remittance of user deposits to Alameda.
The chain reaction caused by the collapse of FTX is gradually emerging and continues to expand. Hundreds of companies are involved, and the entire crypto finance has suffered a heavy blow. (Recommended reading "Special Topic | FTX liquidity exhausts, Lehman's moment in the crypto industry is coming (continuously updated)") After the
FTX hacking incident, Gary Wang, hidden under the water, has attracted much attention. As a core FTX Alameda and a world-class tycoon who made the Forbes Rich List, this mysterious figure has no digital identity, no resume, and even no photos. "The Block" writes an article about the mysterious man Gary Wang. Original author Kari McMahon, compiled and integrated by Odaily Planet Daily.
Who is Gary Wang?
According to people familiar with the matter, at least $1 billion in customer funds disappeared from FTX.
12 On the afternoon of the 212th, Reuters' reports also revealed more doubts. The FTX legal and financial team survey found that SBF implemented so-called “backdoors” in FTX’s accounting system, which was built with custom software. This “backdoor” allows SBF to perform work that may change the financial situation of a company without reminding others, including external accountants. It is through this setting that SBF transferred $10 billion to Alameda without setting out any risk warning. The backdoor with such high authority in
is naturally far from what ordinary employees do. Media and investors set their sights on Gary Wang.
is on the official FTX website, only SBF and Gary Wang hold the title of "Founder". In addition, Gary Wang also serves as the CTO of FTX. This man acted quite low-key. As a super rich man who was once worth nearly $6 billion, even Forbes could not find a suitable photo for him.
(Gary Wang ranks 227th in Forbes Rich List) The "Team" page of the
FTX website shows that Gary Wang once worked for Google after receiving a degree in mathematics and computer science at . And in the full page of the team members list, only Gary Wang’s avatar is a back. In addition, Gary Wang's LinkedIn page was also deleted, and FTX investor Sequoia Capital 's website also only lists his back photos.
(the picture comes from the official FTX website, the page has now been deleted)
Four former colleagues of Gary Wang who wanted to be named admitted admitted that Gary Wang is a taciturn and addicted to programming.
A source familiar with Alameda and FTX businesses said: "From an employee's perspective, Gary is always very alienated and he doesn't usually show up in the office." "He likes to work from home, he is almost the only person who can work from home. Others always have to stay in the office, and Gary is always the exception."
The source then added that Gary's only interest was sitting in the room to program. “He always left me with the impression: ‘Tell me what to do and leave me alone.’ Whenever SBF hits a critical moment, Gary is always out of the way. Gary is just a weapon to be deployed.”
“very minimalist” engineer team
FTX is known for the lean operation of its team of engineers, the exchange was originally built by only two developers. SBF said in an interview with Insider that even by the end of 2021, the exchange and its all subsidiaries had only 10 to 25 developers running. By comparison, Binance is opening up to 185 engineers alone, while OKX is hiring 43 engineers.
A source familiar with Alameda said, "We only have five engineers." The source also speculated about the practice, "In retrospect, it seems that this is because almost all of these people have root access, and they don't want others to see it."
According to SBF, he is not good at programming himself, so he needs a small engineering team to help him build FTX. In an interview, he admitted, "Most people think I am an excellent programmer, . But that's not the case, I didn't write any code for FTX. There are many others in FTX."
Recent reports from Reuters pointed out that SBF has set up a backdoor in FTX. But one FTX investor made the supplementary point, “If there is a backdoor in the infrastructure, it’s hard to imagine Gary wouldn’t know about it.” Another source familiar with FTX and Alameda agreed, saying Gary Wang is one of the few people with permissions to the code base root.
"If it weren't for the code added by Gary, he wouldn't have found it." A source said.
Mysterious Man
An insider said that although he had met Wang, they never spoke, and "he rarely talked to people." "When you have to talk to Gary, he will respond in batches every week. It's hard for him to get in touch."
An employee who worked for FTX and Alameda said that Gary didn't talk much and didn't need much, but he had a very close relationship with SBF. SBF is the person Gary talks to the most. Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison is one of the only people who get Gary’s quick response. "It's not clear how he's involved, but he's certainly considered a close member of the circle." A former employee thought so.
Gary Wang lives in a luxury penthouse in Albany, an upscale community of Bahamas , and lives with SBF, Caroline Ellison and several others.
short seller MarcCohodes has been warning investors about FTX since May. He once said in a statement that Gary was not trustworthy.
" Gary Wang has no digital identity, he has no searchable emails, phone numbers, and has never spoken to anyone I can find. This behavior brings more questions than answers, and no one with a net worth of $11 billion would hide himself like this.”
Benjamin Robertson and Frank Chaparro also contributed to this article.
