The FTX Betrayal: I Watched My Boss Lie to Our Clients

When Zane Tackett quit his position as head of institutional sales at FTX on Tuesday, he sent us VIPs a message that still makes my blood boil.

I trusted these people with my clients’ money. We all did. The VIP team was completely blindsided by the bankruptcy - not a single warning came our way. The executives kept feeding us lies until the very end, swearing there were “sufficient funds” to cover customer assets.

Then SBF dropped his bankruptcy bomb on Twitter Tuesday morning. That coward didn’t even have the decency to tell his own staff first! We’d been reassuring our biggest clients based on executive promises that everything was fine. We weren’t lying intentionally - we were being used as pawns in their sick game.

I’d spent years building relationships with these clients. Many trusted me personally. Now I look like either a fool or a fraud. How am I supposed to face them again?

The crypto industry always talks about transparency and trust, yet these major platforms operate like black boxes until they implode. The executives walk away with millions while loyal employees and trusting customers get screwed. This whole situation reeks of deception at the highest levels.

The worst part? This kind of collapse damages the entire ecosystem. Every time one of these exchanges goes down, more people lose faith in crypto’s legitimacy. Those of us who genuinely believe in this technology end up collateral damage in someone else’s greed-driven disaster.

I should have seen the warning signs. The cracks were there if you knew where to look. Next time I’ll do my own due diligence rather than trusting the slick promises from the C-suite.