Gary Wang, former FTX executive, retook the witness stand on Friday and continued testifying against former roommate and boss Sam Bankman-Fried, who stands accused of stealing billions of dollars from customers of the cryptocurrency exchange.
Wang, 30, is one of three insiders at FTX who have pleaded guilty to fraud charges and signed a cooperation agreement with the government. He and Bankman-Fried were college roommates, before going on to co-found the hedge fund Alameda Research.
The former chief technology officer, Wang, FTX's former chief technology officer, started the day by giving the jury a technical explanation of how the exchange's website was programmed.
He testified on Thursday that while in FTX, he created software code that gave'special privileges' to Alameda, allowing it to withdraw unlimited funds.
Prosecutors have said that those privileges were one of the main mechanisms that Bankman-Fried used to plunder customer assets, leading to the exchange's collapse in November 2022.
Bankman-Fried's lawyer, Bankman-Fried, said that FTX was a startup and that Alameda was not just an ordinary customer on the exchange but a market maker, which generated supply and demand in the exchange's early days.
While Wang is the first Cooperator to take the stand, jurors have heard from three other witnesses so far. A former FTX user testified he was unable to withdraw his money after the exchange collapsed, and Matt Huang, head of a crypto-focused fund that invested in the firm, said he was told Alameda received 'no preferential treatment' on the platform.
Adam Yedidia, a former FTX computer programmer who reported to Wang, testified that he expressed interest to Bankman-Fried in mid-2022, after learning that Alameda had borrowed $85 million from the exchange. Bankman-Fried said Bankman-Fried appeared worried and told him the companies were 'not bulletproof' as they had been the year before.
According to Zack Prince, the founder of digital currency lender BlockFi, the witness is expected to testify after Wang ends the trial on Tuesday.