Money From Nothing.

In reality, Bankman-Fried's scheme was simple: create FTT tokens and sell them to Alameda Research at discounted rates, then steal FTX's customer assets and lend them to Alameda Research to make risky bets in the crypto market. FEATURES BEFORE SAM BANKMAN-FRIED BECAME THE POSTER CHILD FOR RAPAcious speculative folly, he was the anointed emissary from the future of finance - sharing conference stages with world leaders, hobnobbing with celebrities, and donating enormous sums of cash to political parties, think tanks, and charities. Bankman-Fried was obviously aware of the industry's limitations thanks to his firsthand experience propping up crypto's paper value, so his pre-bankruptcy goal was to move past crypto and develop FTX into a financial super-app: "I want FTX to be a place where you can do anything you want with your next dollar. And this crisis led to more devastating reports on FTX's Ponzi-like business model, documenting a back-door portal in the company's trading software that apparently enabled Bankman-Fried's fraudulent handling of customers' funds. [Extracted from the article]