Caroline Ellison was the CEO of Alameda Research, a Boston native, and math whiz, who played a role in the downfall of the crypto exchange FTX.
As Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire began to unravel in 2022, his ex-colleague, now 29-year-old Caroline Ellison, emerged as a figure of intrigue and speculation.
In August 2022, Ellison became the head of Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried’s trading firm that was closely intertwined with his fallen crypto exchange, FTX. By November, as FTX swiftly spiraled into bankruptcy, Ellison began to draw attention for her role in overseeing the risky bets Alameda took with customers’ funds.
She’s since pleaded guilty to conspiring with Bankman-Fried — her former on-again-off-again boyfriend — in an $11 billion fraud scheme and testified as the star witness in Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial.
And now the same judge who sentenced Bankman-Fried to 25 years in prison earlier this year will hand down Ellison’s sentence on Tuesday. Prosecutors and Ellison’s lawyers, though, have asked for her to spend no time behind bars due to her cooperation with the government.
« Ellison stood out not only for the speed of her cooperation, but for her consistent candor beginning in her very first meeting with the Government », prosecutors wrote in their sentencing letter. « She accepted full responsibility from her very first proffer and did not minimize or shift blame. »
Former federal prosecutors have told Business Insider that it’s likely Ellison won’t be locked up.
Here’s what we know about Caroline Ellison. Ellison primarily grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.
The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia reportedly lived in Ellison’s former home, she wrote on her now archived Tumblr blog, worldoptimization.Her parents are both academics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Her father, Glenn Ellison, and her mother, Sara Fisher Ellison, are economics professors at MIT.
Ellison and her two sisters « definitely got exposed to a lot of economics » growing up, she told Forbes. When Ellison was 8, she gave her father an economics study analyzing stuffed animal prices at Toys ‘R’ Us for his birthday in lieu of a card, Forbes reported.
Ellison exhibited a special passion for mathematics from an early age.
And her father supported her interest in the subject, too.
He encouraged her and her siblings to enter math competitions — which Ellison continued throughout middle school and high school, according to the .
Ellison graduated from Newton North High School in 2012, and went on to Stanford University, where she studied mathematics.
Ellison said she picked Stanford because she wanted to get away from Boston and « try something different », she said on The FTX Podcast in 2020.
Though she contemplated studying linguistics, political science, or computer science when she was a freshman, she said on the podcast that she opted for mathematics because there were more opportunities to take other classes on the side.
Ellison also began exploring effective altruism in college.
It’s a philosophy that examines how people can use their time, money, and resources to best help others. She eventually joined Stanford’s Effective Altruism Club and became its vice president, according to Forbes.
In later years, the extent to which Ellison believed in EA has become unclear. She seems to have renamed her Tumblr blog from « worldoptimization » to « Fake Charity Nerd Girl » at one point.
Ellison went on to work at the trading firm Jane Street after college.
Ellison spent around 18 months as a trader on Jane Street’s equities desk and said on the FTX Podcast that she « loved it. »
Ellison also met Sam Bankman-Fried at Jane Street, and the two reportedly bonded over their interest in effective altruism, for which SBF became a poster boy.
By 2018, Bankman-Fried had already launched a crypto trading firm called Alameda Research and persuaded Ellison to join the firm.
The switch from Jane Street to Alameda was initially challenge for Ellison, she has said.
« I wanted to be an expert on everything, but there was still lots of stuff in the crypto world that I knew nothing about », she said on The FTX Podcast, adding that she « had to learn a whole new set of intuitions.
