> Since every dollar they received in customer deposits appeared both in assets and liabilities, the only way they ended up with liabilities that their (non-Ser

> Since every dollar they received in customer deposits appeared both in assets and liabilities, the only way they ended up with liabilities that their (non-Serum, non-FTT) assets did not cover, is by exchanging the dollars with something that lost value. That's the way it ought to work in the absence of fraud or theft. But as Matt says, the reason this balance sheet is so insane is that there's no evidence this happened. Only a very small amount of customer dollars could have been used to generate Serum. FTX invented several cryptocurrencies which, at a 10x inflated valuation, obscure the fact that they completely lost $16 billion of assets. In fact, it seems that SBF used a backdoor in his own software to secretly transfer customer funds to Alameda. There's no evidence that any sort of internal accounting actually balanced the books in the way you suggest, which is what's so insane about this whole story.