I haven’t seen any evidence that FTX promised to never invest customer deposits. Does anyone have a link? My understanding is that FTX offered customers the opportunity to make leveraged trades, i.e., to bet more than the money they had in their accounts. This suggests to me that FTX was not just an exchange but a lender, which is a very different sort of financial beast (with a different risk profile). I also understand that there was a significant interest rate on the customer accounts -- 6% -- which adds weight to that conclusion. You can’t get a return on investment without risk.
The issue is that as a user of FTX, you were supposed to be able to choose whether your money was being lent out or not—e.g. there was a “lend/stop lending” button in the interface. It seems totally reasonable to me that FTX loses your money if you lend it. But my current impression is that the amount lent to, and lost by, Alameda was much more than the amount that users agreed to have lent out. Agree that segregation of funds, if implemented properly, would solve the problem here.
The issue is that as a user of FTX, you were supposed to be able to choose whether your money was being lent out or not—e.g. there was a “lend/stop lending” button in the interface. It seems totally reasonable to me that FTX loses your money if you lend it. But my current impression is that the amount lent to, and lost by, Alameda was much more than the amount that users agreed to have lent out. Agree that segregation of funds, if implemented properly, would solve the problem here.