Netflix Turned FTX's Collapse Into a Love Story, Ex-COO Says
The full trailer for "The Altruists" landed this week, and the eight-episode Netflix series about FTX is already drawing fire from the people who lived through it.
Former FTX COO Constance Wang said watching the trailer made her "physically throw up." She posted the reaction on X on Friday, and she did not soften it.
What the show gets wrong
Wang ran operations at FTX from before the exchange even had a name, serving as COO from early 2019 and later as co-CEO in its final months. She says the trailer's version of the company bears little resemblance to the place she actually worked.
Her main complaint is scale. FTX had fewer than 200 employees at its peak, and many of them worked 16- to 18-hour days. "The media loves the story that FTX blew up because we were all partying in the Bahamas, but the place I worked looked nothing like that," she said.
The romance framing
Much of the trailer leans on the relationship between Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison, played by Anthony Boyle and Julia Garner. That is the part Wang objects to most.
"FTX's collapse ruined so many people's lives, including ours, and Netflix decided to make it a love story," she said. "Shame on you."
The show takes its name from effective altruism, the movement the pair said they belonged to. Bankman-Fried is serving 25 years for fraud, while Ellison pleaded guilty, cooperated with prosecutors, and received two years.
Why crypto should care
Wang is not a neutral witness — she lost everything in the collapse, and she says so plainly. But her objection points at something real for anyone holding assets on an exchange: FTX was a custody failure before it was a personality story.
- FTX collapsed after a liquidity crisis exposed its ties to Alameda Research and the misuse of customer funds
- Wang later co-founded Pacifica, a trading platform
All eight episodes drop on November 19. Watch it if you want. Just remember that the people who actually lost money are not the ones getting a script.