Netflix's FTX Series Made Ex-COO Physically Ill — "Love Story" Gets Cold Shoulder 💔

Constance Wang, the former chief operating officer of FTX, said watching the trailer for the streaming platform's upcoming series on the exchange's collapse made her physically ill, writing in an October 9 post on X that "watching it made me physically throw up." Wang, who joined FTX as COO in early 2019 and rose to co-CEO in the company's final months, accused Netflix of reframing the implosion as "a love story" while the actual fallout "ruined many lives." She closed the post with "Shame on you."

In a point-by-point rebuttal of the trailer's party-culture imagery, Wang pushed back on depictions suggesting a sprawling Bahamas-based staff in perpetual revelry. She said FTX's core team was under 200 employees working 16 to 18 hour shifts, with Sam Bankman-Fried "almost always at his desk," adding that she was the last person to leave the Bahamas after Bankman-Fried's extradition. Wang's criticism targeted the series' apparent choice of tone, arguing that the human and financial wreckage of the FTX collapse deserved a treatment more grounded in the firm's documented operations rather than stylized romance.

The series in question, "The Altruists," premieres November 19 on Netflix, with executive producer credits attached to Higher Ground, the production banner co-founded by Barack and Michelle Obama. Julia Garner is set to star as former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, one of the key cooperating witnesses in the criminal case that followed the exchange's $8 billion shortfall revealed in late 2022. The cast, release date and production credits were confirmed in earlier coverage of the project.

Bankman-Fried was convicted in November 2023 on seven counts including wire fraud and conspiracy, and was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison in March 2024. Ellison pleaded guilty to fraud charges in December 2022 and later testified at Bankman-Fried's trial as a prosecution witness. FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on November 11, 2022, with subsequent court filings estimating customer and creditor losses in the multi-billion-dollar territory tied to the $8 billion figure Wang cited in her post.