FTX adviser rescued $500m during November 2022 hack
Kumanan Ramanathan who worked for a legal firm consulting for Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange was able to safeguard up to $500 million of customer funds on the day hackers attacked FTX. Amid bizarre transactions out of FTX wallets on Nov. 11, Zach Dexter, chief executive of FTX subsidiary LedgerX rallied former employees on a Google Meet call to brainstorm how they might protect vulnerable user assets. Ramanathan, advising FTX from Alvarez & Marshall, volunteered to create a new wallet on his Ledger Nano and transfer the funds there, according to a Wired investigative report. Ledger Nano is a hardware wallet used for self-custody of cryptocurrencies. Also on the call was Gary Wang, former chief technology officer at FTX and Alameda, and currently witness for the prosecution in Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial. Wang reportedly aided the effort to transfer around half a billion of customer assets to Ramanathan’s personal hard wallet. As CTO, Wang had backdoor keys to FTX’s sys...