The fall from the celebrated child prodigy to what is probably the biggest bankruptcy in the crypto world to date took just a few days.

The crypto exchange FTX crashed within a very short time, destroying the reputation of its founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

What looked like a huge success story from the outside was more like a puny house of cards from the inside.

which has now collapsed.

There are gaps in the balance sheet, millions of customer funds are missing.

It was all an accident, says Sam Bankman-Fried.

Critics and investigators say there were criminal intentions behind it.

Keeping track is really not easy.

New information emerges almost daily, making the scandal even more scandalous.

The world still seems fine for Sam Bankman-Fried and his crypto exchange at the beginning of November.

Within just three years, the founder had managed to make his company one of the most important in the crypto industry.

Customers trade and manage cryptocurrencies there.

At the start of the year, the platform was worth about $32 billion -- more than Deutsche Bank.

Many celebrities, including football player Tom Brady and model Gisele Bundchen, promote the crypto exchange.

Influential investors, such as the world's largest asset manager Blackrock, are also involved.

Once celebrated

In shorts, a T-shirt and a curly hairstyle, the crypto star regularly appears at lectures and promotes his industry.

And gets a big round of applause for it.

The 30-year-old just knows how best to approach the decision-makers.

As a major donor, he financed the election campaigns of the Democrats in the USA.

Sam Bankman-Fried is considered one of the most trusted in the business at this point.

Then, at the beginning of November, a report appeared on the Coindesk online platform.

The allegation is that a subsidiary is said to have gambled with customer funds on the crypto exchange.

Alameda Research is the name of the company that Sam Bankman-Fried also founded.

This company is said to have deposited its own cryptocurrency called FTT as collateral for loans.

In other words, play money that could lose its value at any time.

It does that a little later.

Just a few days after the report was published, one Chengpeng Zhao wrote on Twitter that he would sell all his FTT cryptocurrency holdings.

Zhao, also known as CZ, is the head of Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange.

In the early days he had worked with FTX.

Over time, however, the two cryptostars have become rivals and let the world know about it via Twitter.

From the earlier friendship, however, Binance still has a large part of the cryptocurrency FTT - and thus power over the exchange rate of the currency.

Panic among investors

The message from Zhao to sell the tokens caused panic among many investors.

More and more people are starting to withdraw their money from crypto exchange FTX.

A “bank run” so to speak, as such a situation is called in the traditional financial world.

Sam Bankman-Fried tries to calm the customers down but fails.

FTT's price plummets - raising doubts that FTX's liquidity may be at risk.

For a moment it seems as if Sam Bankman-Fried would bail out the competitor Binance and take over the struggling crypto exchange.

But Binance finally announces: No, they didn't want FTX.

They have checked the necessary documents and papers and it is too risky for them.

At the same time, the US Securities and Exchange Commission begins to look into the case.