Alameda Research LLC, a cryptocurrency trading firm, was co-founded in September 2017 by Sam Bankman-Fried and Tara MacAulay. In November 2022, FTX, Bankman-Fried's cryptocurrency exchange, experienced a solvency crisis, and both FTX and Alameda filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. That same month, anonymous sources told The Wall Street Journal that FTX had lent more than half of its customer's funds to Alameda, a decision that the sources said Bankman-Fried described as a poor judgment call. This was explicitly forbidden by FTX's terms-of-service. On 12 November 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported that anonymous sources had said that Alamedas board member Caroline Ellison said that she, Bankman-Fried and other senior FTX officials were aware of that decision. The FTX collapse has been described as the "fastest big corporate failure in American history." There is a substantial basis to believe that CEO Bankman-Fried who has since been replaced by John Jay Ray III along with other managers "mismanaged" the company "or engaged in fraudulent conduct. Following the rapid collapse of FTX, lawyers began to question if the exchange had engaged in fraudulent activity by misusing customer funds Shortly after he took over, new FTX CEO Ray said that the company had concealed the misuse of corporate funds, which included the purchase of property in the Bahamas for staff. "Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here," said Ray. Bloomberg News reported, in September 2022, on the close relationship between Alameda Research and FTX. Bloomberg noted that Alameda had functioned as a market maker for FTX early in the exchange's history, and that the trading firm remained, in June and July 2022, the biggest known depositor of stable coins on FTX. Bloomberg further stated that the regulatory oversight which applies to companies operating in traditional equities markets would have prohibited the relationship between the two firms were it applicable. Alameda's trading on FTX meant the trading firm was potentially in a position to gain financially when others lost money on the exchange.] Bankman-Fried, at points, defended Alameda's use of FTX, as a liquidity provider. According to FTXs new CEO Ray, Alameda had a secret exemption from FTXs auto-liquidation protocol. Later, the existence of such an undisclosed beneficial relationship was described by Ray, the new CEO of FTX, as a "complete failure of corporate controls." Between early 2021 and March 2022, Alameda Research amassed crypto tokens ahead of FTX announcing the decision to list them for trading. According to anonymous sources cited by The Wall Street Journal, FTX had lent $10 billion of its customers' assets to Alameda Research in 2022. Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison disclosed to other Alameda employees that she, Sam Bankman-Fried, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh knew about that decision. An anonymous source cited by the New York Times said the same. According to the sources cited by The Wall Street Journal, Ellison said the funds were used in part to pay back loans Alameda had taken to make investments. Ray said that FTX used software to conceal the misuse of customer funds. Several months after Bloomberg's initial report on the relationship between the two firms, on 2 November 2022, Coin Desk reported that a significant portion of Alameda Research's assets were held in FTT, the exchange token issued by FTX. It said that there were $5.1 billion worth of FTT tokens in circulation, and that Alameda's balance sheet held $3.66 billion of "unlocked FTT", $2.16 billion of "FTT collateral", and $292 million of "locked FTT". In the weeks immediately preceding the publication of the story by Coin Desk, Bankman-Fried was characterized by anonymous sources cited by Bloomberg as "desperately" attempting to raise money for FTX. Additionally, Bankman-Fried had been publicly "dueling" with Changpeng Zhao on Twitter in the months preceding the CoinDesk article, in part due to disagreements stemming from their differing views on regulation of cryptocurrency. Amid the crisis, Bankman-Fried announced he would wind down operations at Alameda Research and resigned as CEO of FTX. Bankman-Fried's net worth peaked at $26 billion. In October 2022, he had an estimated net worth of $10.5 billion. However, on November 8, 2022, his net worth was estimated to have dropped 94 percent in a day to $991.5 million, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index the largest one-day drop in the index's history. By November 11, 2022, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index considered Bankman-Fried to have no material wealth. On December 12, 2022, Bankman-Fried was arrested in the Bahamas, pending potential extradition to the United States. An indictment of him before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York was unsealed on the 13 December, revealing a range of charges for offences including multiple variants of wire fraud and conspiracy. Alameda Researchs board of directors consists of three members Caroline Ellison, Gary Wang, and Nishad Singh. At a regular board meeting, the board selects Sam Bankman-Fried as CEO of the corporation. Later, an audit reveals that during his term as CEO he had openly embezzled $10 billion from FTX. The same audit reveals that the board knew when it selected Bankman-Fried that he previously publicly supported effective altruism while contending that he was pursuing earnings to give as an altruistic career. Additionally, they were aware that he was a member of Giving What We Can and claimed that he planned to donate the great majority of his wealth to effective charities over the course of his life. He founded the FTX Future Fund for this purpose. It was clearly known to the board that Future Fund had committed $160 million in charitable grants and investments by September 1, 2022 but that in November 2022, Bankman-Fried stated that the board had known all along that the altruistic appearance he and his company displayed was not sincere, and was a "dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths so that everyone likes us". Can the corporation hold directors Ellison, Wang, and Singh personally liable?