Amazon Prime is reportedly working on a miniseries that will portray the rise and fall of the controversial crypto figure Sam Bankman-Fried and his exchange FTX.com shortly after the Bahamas-based company succumbed to bankruptcy.
According to a report from Variety, Amazon has tapped the production company owned by Joe and Anthony Russo – better known for their work as directors of several films of the Marvel Cinematic Universe – known as AGBO for developing what could be an eight-episode masterpiece.
Amazon Aims to Air the Show in the Spring of 2023
Amazon is aiming to get the show out somewhere in the spring of next year and is counting on the services of David Weil to come up with the plot and script. Weil is the writer behind two other Prime shows called “Solos” and “Hunters”.
The spectacular implosion of what once was a crypto darling has enticed Amazon’s studio to create the show. The head of the film production arm of the e-commerce giant, Jennifer Salke, said that she could not “think of better partners” than David, Joe, and Anthony to bring the series to life.
The Russo’s sounded quite interested in unraveling what happened and how things ended up as they are.
“It crosses many sectors—celebrity, politics, academia, tech, criminality, sex, drugs, and the future of modern finance. At the center of it all sits an extremely mysterious figure with complex and potentially dangerous motivations. We want to understand why”, the brothers told Variety.
The producers are apparently relying on journalists who have been reporting about the case since the get-go but have not disclosed who their specific sources are. Further details about the miniseries may be revealed by Amazon (AMZN) later on as the FTX story is still unraveling.
What is FTX and What Happened to It?
Founded just three years ago, FTX.com quickly became one of the most valuable companies in the space. The firm’s core business consisted of offering crypto derivatives such as options and futures at a point when nobody in the industry was doing it.
They were able to do so by establishing their headquarters in tax havens such as the Bahamas and Cayman Islands. In addition, the decentralized and largely unregulated nature of the crypto market allowed it to offer these products without being subject to the oversight of top-tier financial watchdogs like the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
The complexity of the firm’s operations gave its founder some sort of mythical status. In addition, Bankman-Fried’s persona was in itself disruptive as he hardly shared any of the characteristics of a traditional financial executive. He wore shorts instead of expensive suits and rarely combed his hair.
However, what investors and the crypto community considered eccentricities of an MIT-graduated genius may have actually been hints of what his firm looked like on the inside as reports have surfaced about how disorganized and dysfunctional FTX was.
According to the lawyers who have been appointed to handle the bankruptcy case of FTX, between $1 and $2 billion in customer funds are unaccounted for and reportedly missing as per their initial findings.
In the wake of the rumors that FTX used customer funds to make bets in the crypto market, manipulate the price of its native crypto token FTT, and invest in risky ventures via its Alameda Research prop trading arm, one of its toughest competitors – Binance – offered to buy out the firm.
However, the company backed down from its offer right after the first few days of due diligence, possibly as they either smell that there were a lot of missing pieces or noticed the complete mess altogether.
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