Alameda Research was a quantitative trading firm and crypto venture fund founded in 2017 by Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). It began as an arbitrage and market-making operation, exploiting price gaps between Asian and Western crypto exchanges. Over time it evolved into one of the most active venture investors in the industry, backing early-stage DeFi and infrastructure projects – primarily within the Solana ecosystem. At its peak in 2021–2022, the firm claimed assets under management of roughly $14.6 billion, though independent verification of that figure was never possible. Alameda was registered in Hong Kong and later operated primarily from Nassau, The Bahamas, co-located with FTX Trading Ltd.
The firm's collapse in November 2022 became the defining crypto failure of the decade. A leaked balance sheet published by CoinDesk on 2 November 2022 revealed that a large portion of Alameda's assets consisted of FTT – the native token of FTX exchange, which Alameda and FTX had effectively issued themselves. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced the sale of Binance's FTT holdings days later, triggering a bank run. FTX halted withdrawals on 8 November 2022 and filed for bankruptcy on 11 November 2022. Alameda ceased operations simultaneously. Court filings later showed that Alameda had borrowed billions in customer funds from FTX without customer consent.
Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted on all seven counts of fraud and conspiracy in November 2023 and sentenced to 25 years in prison in March 2024.
Notable Investments
- Serum (SRM) – Solana-based decentralised exchange; co-founded by Alameda and FTX
- Pyth Network – on-chain oracle protocol on Solana
- Oxygen Protocol – DeFi prime brokerage on Solana
- Maps.fi – Solana-based yield aggregator
- Bonfida – Solana DEX and naming service
- Akash Network – decentralised cloud compute marketplace
- Civic – identity verification protocol
- DODO – proactive market maker protocol on Ethereum and BNB Chain
- Saber – Solana stablecoin AMM
- StepN (GMT) – move-to-earn application on Solana
Many of these projects saw token values collapse after the FTX bankruptcy, as Alameda's positions were liquidated or frozen in bankruptcy proceedings.
Team
- Sam Bankman-Fried – founder and former CEO. MIT physics graduate, previously worked at Jane Street Capital as a quantitative trader. Convicted of wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering in November 2023.
- Caroline Ellison – former co-CEO (from 2021). Stanford mathematics graduate. Cooperated with federal prosecutors; sentenced to two years in prison in September 2024.
- Sam Trabucco – former co-CEO alongside Ellison; resigned in August 2022, months before the collapse. MIT mathematics graduate and former Jane Street trader.
- Nishad Singh – former head of engineering at FTX; cooperated with prosecutors.
- Ryan Salame – former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets; pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and sentenced to 7.5 years in 2024.
Recent Activity
Alameda Research no longer operates as an investment entity. The FTX estate, overseen by restructuring CEO John J. Ray III, has been recovering and distributing assets to creditors since 2023. By early 2025, the FTX estate had recovered enough funds to repay creditors at or above dollar-value claims, a rare outcome in major crypto bankruptcies. The FTX bankruptcy docket documents ongoing asset sales, legal settlements, and distributions. Several lawsuits against Alameda's former counterparties – including Genesis, Sequoia, and various market makers – remain active as of mid-2026.
Alameda Research's legacy is largely cautionary. It demonstrated how an opaque trading firm, operating with client funds and self-issued collateral, could mask insolvency at scale for years. Regulators in the US, EU, and Asia cited the FTX-Alameda case when drafting new crypto market structure rules. For investors, the case set a precedent for due diligence on fund custody, counterparty exposure, and token concentration risk. Public information about the firm's internal governance and investment decision-making process remains limited to what emerged through criminal proceedings and bankruptcy filings.
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