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I don't think FTX actually applied or passed GAAP. From the filings it is clear they couldn't have. They barely have records of their liabilities, and definitely not of their assets. I am not even touching co-mingling of different classes of accounts. The statement you are referencing is another lie to customers and investors.

I know they employed a "Decentraland" sketchy "auditor." But that's it. It is like employing me to do your haircut -- you are 100% screwed and not getting a haircut, but some hair will be cut.



My point is not "FTX's books were in good shape"; with the benefit of hindsight they clearly weren't.

Instead, my point is that an exchange saying that they passed a GAAP audit isn't the level of positive signal my parent seems to think it is.


They didn't say that they passed, just that they claimed to "complete requirements" needed to pass. The financial engineering version of lying with facts like "assembled in USA from foreign components".


They claimed to have passed:

2021-07-21 "Yesterday, FTX became the first (?) crypto derivatives exchange to complete a GAAP audit!" -- https://mobile.twitter.com/sbf_ftx/status/142135472191111577...

2021-08 -26: "Both @FTX_Official and @ftx_us have passed US GAAP audits and plan to continue getting audits going forward." --https://twitter.com/SBF_FTX/status/1431087427154849795


He doesn't seem to mention what third party completed the audit, and given what we know about FTX's accounting now that means it was either an internal audit or SBF was lying.


Coindesk seems to have obtained the audited financials and reported on them: https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/11/18/a-complete-failur...


I assume they were counting the FTT tokens as actually holding value when they were propped up


Reading it doesn’t it say they have completed the requirements to pass but haven’t actually passed? Seems like the kind of word play that should send red flags.


> Both FTX and FTX.US have completed requirements to pass the US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) audit

This is legally meaningless. Literally anyone can say they completed requirements to pass, they didn't actually pass




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