FTX (FTT) Ex-Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison Works at Manifund Under Name “Carol”

Ellison Hired at Manifund as “Carol”

Caroline Ellison, the former Alameda Research chief executive who helped Sam Bankman-Fried divert roughly $8 billion in customer funds from FTX, is back in full-time employment — under a different name. Manifund cofounder Austin Chen confirmed on Friday that Ellison, who served about two years in prison for her role in the exchange’s 2022 collapse, has become a permanent hire at the nonprofit grant platform, posting updates and fielding user support under the pseudonym “Carol.” Manifund funds projects in effective altruism and artificial intelligence safety, and it promises radical transparency by publishing its own finances, data and source code. Per Chen’s disclosure, Ellison began a work trial on July 13 and converted to a full-time role on August 10, with both months spent working as Carol. In the post announcing the hire, Chen apologized for the pseudonym while standing behind the decision, resting his case on second chances rather than on her résumé. “I believe in redemption,” he wrote, noting that Ellison “admitted her faults,” moved to make creditors whole and completed her prison term. Chen also credited the FTX Future Fund — the philanthropic arm the exchange built before its implosion — for seeding his earlier projects and shaping how Manifund distributes grants. Her practical selling point, he argued, is bookkeeping: Ellison built a reconciliation tool that flagged misregistered transactions worth six-figure amounts. The contrast with her Alameda years is stark — the trading firm’s own records concealed roughly $8.7 billion in missing customer deposits, the accounting hole at the center of the fraud. For anyone still tracking the aftermath, the news matters because FTT, the governance token of the collapsed exchange, has traded since 2022 essentially as a claim on how this entire saga resolves.

CFTC and SEC Close Ellison Files

Ellison’s own legal reckoning has largely wrapped. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission closed its civil case against her on August 19, with Ellison accepting a five-year futures trading ban and a 10-year registration ban without a new fine; regulators pointed to her cooperation and to the $11.02 billion criminal forfeiture already on the books. The restrictions effectively wall her off from U.S. derivatives markets for the next decade. A separate Securities and Exchange Commission order bars her from officer and director roles at public companies — a restriction noted when she left prison in January — though staff work at a nonprofit sits outside its scope. The FTX estate, however, has no such closing chapter. On the same August day, its recovery trust asked a Delaware judge to block two claimants from reviving old fraud theories in pursuit of extra payouts — a filing we reviewed directly on the Delaware docket. The trust, the vehicle winding down FTX’s obligations, has already sent more than $11 billion to creditors under a plan built to settle those claims collectively, and the dispute returns to court on October 20. The estate’s litigation burden does not end there: Sam Bankman-Fried has petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn the $11 billion forfeiture tied to the collapse and, in a companion move, challenged his 25-year sentence — steps that could reshape how any remaining funds are treated. For altcoin traders who lived through 2022, the pattern is familiar: failed platforms rarely resolve cleanly, and the tail of claims, clawbacks and appeals stretches years past the initial rug pull-style collapse. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Bitget.

October 20 Hearing in Focus

Read together, the two threads trace one arc: individual accountability is winding down while the estate’s civil machinery grinds on. The load-bearing primary record here is the Delaware court filing itself — it shows a recovery trust that has already distributed more than $11 billion asking the court to shut down revived fraud theories rather than relitigate them. For FTT holders, the October 20 hearing is the date that matters; any change to creditor recoveries flows through the estate’s proceedings, not through Ellison’s new job. COINOTAG’s read: the token’s fate remains hostage to litigation timelines, and no distribution detail has yet changed that equation.