Early last year, cryptocurrency exchange FTX US was setting its sights on a vast pool of money: individual retirement accounts (IRAs), Bloomberg News reported. “We have IRAs trading on FTX today, and are making a push to serve this segment,” Nate Clancy, FTX US’s vice president of business development, wrote in a March email to a New Jersey-based investment adviser, a copy of which was seen by Bloomberg News. Americans held more than $11 trillion in IRAs as of last year. The outreach, part of a multifaceted effort by the wider FTX Group to expand its base of everyday retail customers, casts light on the exchange’s sprawling ambitions in the months leading up to its implosion — and gives a glimpse into how the damage might have been even worse had the plans had longer to gestate. FTX and former Chief Executive Sam Bankman-Fried’s broader crypto empire collapsed in November. U.S. authorities allege he fraudulently used customer money to prop up his trading firm Alameda Research, leaving legions of clients high and dry when FTX went bankrupt. The charges center on the group’s global trading platform FTX.com, but FTX US, its smaller unit for US investors, was part of the bankruptcy.
