FTX Platform Gave Alameda Trades a Secret Speed Edge, CFTC Says

Sam Bankman-Fried’s trading house Alameda Research had a secret speed advantage when executing orders on his now-collapsed FTX crypto exchange, according to the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Alameda, which also tumbled into bankruptcy last month along with FTX, was able to skirt certain portions of the exchange’s trading architecture and sidestep some automated verification processes, the CFTC said in a complaint filed Tuesday in Manhattan federal court.

“These advantages were not publicly disclosed” and yielded a “significant speed advantage,” the CFTC said.

While most or all other customers accessing the FTX platform through an application programming interface — ...