FTX CEO John Ray: ‘Literally, There’s No Record Keeping Whatsoever’

WAGNER: “I thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I thank you, Mr. Ray, for being here for the work that you’re doing. Mr. Ray, you have compared FTX as worse than Enron. Could you please elaborate on some of the specific ways FTX is worse than one of the largest corporate frauds in history?”

RAY: “The FTX group is unusual in the sense that, you know, I’ve done probably a dozen large-scale bankruptcies over my career, including Enron, of course, Every one of those entities had some financial problem or another. They have some characteristics that are in common. This one is unusual, and it’s unusual in the sense that literally there’s no record keeping whatsoever. It’s the absence of record keeping. Employees would communicate. You know, invoicing and expenses on Slack, which is essentially a way of communicating for chat rooms. They used QuickBooks. Multibillion-dollar company using QuickBooks.”

WAGNER: “QuickBooks?”

RAY: “QuickBooks. Nothing against QuickBooks, very nice tool, just not for a multibillion-dollar company. There’s no independent board, right? We had one person really controlling this, no independent board. That’s highly unusual at a size company this is. And it’s made all more complex because we’re not dealing with widgets or , you know, something it’s tangible. We’re dealing with with crypto and the technological issues are made worse when you’re dealing with an asset such as crypto.”