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Caroline Ellison — Wikipedia
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3/5
Good(3)Good quality. Reputable source with community review or editorial standards, but less rigorous than peer-reviewed venues.
Rating inherited from publication venue: Wikipedia
Relevant as background on the FTX scandal, which intersected with the effective altruism and AI safety funding communities, raising questions about donor integrity and institutional governance.
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Importance: 20/100wiki pagereference
Summary
Wikipedia biography of Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research and key figure in the FTX cryptocurrency exchange collapse. She cooperated with federal prosecutors and testified against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, providing insight into the governance failures and alleged fraud at the center of the case.
Key Points
- •Caroline Ellison served as CEO of Alameda Research, the trading firm closely linked to the FTX cryptocurrency exchange.
- •She pleaded guilty to fraud charges and cooperated with federal prosecutors in the case against Sam Bankman-Fried.
- •Her testimony was central to convicting SBF, revealing how customer funds were misused and internal controls were absent.
- •The FTX collapse raised broader questions about governance, accountability, and oversight in cryptocurrency and effective altruism communities.
- •Her case is often cited as a cautionary example of how misaligned incentives and poor institutional safeguards can lead to large-scale harm.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| EA Epistemic Failures in the FTX Era | -- | 84.0 |
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Caroline Ellison - Wikipedia
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American business executive and convicted fraudster (born 1994)
Caroline Ellison Born November 1994 (age 31) [ 1 ] [ 2 ]
Boston , Massachusetts, U.S. [ 3 ] Education Stanford University ( BS ) Known for Former CEO of Alameda Research Criminal status released Parent(s) Glenn Ellison [ 4 ]
Sara Fisher Ellison [ 5 ] Criminal charge Wire fraud
Money laundering
Conspiracy Penalty Sentenced to two years in prison; served 14 months
Caroline Ellison (born November 1994) is an American former business executive who pleaded guilty to fraud in 2023 in relation to the bankruptcy of FTX . She was the CEO of Alameda Research , a trading firm affiliated with FTX and founded by Sam Bankman-Fried . [ 6 ] Ellison was terminated from her position after FTX and Alameda filed for bankruptcy . [ 7 ] In 2022, Ellison pleaded guilty to two counts of wire fraud , two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering . [ 8 ] [ 9 ] She served 14 months in federal custody and was released in January 2026.
On September 24, 2024, Ellison, a key government witness in the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was sentenced to two years in prison for her role in the scandal, which was one of the biggest in the history of the United States. [ 10 ] [ 11 ] U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan called Ellison's cooperation in the case against Bankman-Fried "very, very substantial" but said prison time was necessary due to the magnitude of the crime. [ 12 ] According to an anonymous source cited by The Wall Street Journal in November 2022, Alameda Research owed $10 billion to FTX. The source said FTX had lent the trading firm money from customer funds at FTX. [ 13 ] [ 14 ] [ 6 ]
Early life and education
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Ellison was born in Boston to a Catholic family and grew up in nearby suburbs Cambridge and Newton . [ 1 ] [ 3 ] She is the eldest of three daughters of Glenn and Sara Fisher Ellison , both economists at MIT . [ 1 ] [ 5 ] [ 15 ] Ellison was brought up Catholic. [ 16 ] She says she and her siblings were exposed to economics early, learning Bayesian statistics in primary school. [ 17 ] At age 8, Ellison gave her father an economic study of stuffed animal prices from Toys "R" Us for his birthday. [ 17 ] At Bigelow Middle School , [ 18 ] [ 19 ] Ellison and her younger sister Anna competed with the math team coached by their father. [ 20 ] In 2008, Ellison received top honors in the American Mathematics Competitions . [ 1 ] &#
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