FTX’s head of institutional sales resigns, says team were ‘completely in the dark’ about insolvency

Zane Tackett, head of institutional sales at FTX, sent a letter to clients stating that his team was “completely in the dark” about the firm’s potential insolvency over the course of this week.

He informed VIP clients of the embattled crypto exchange of his resignation in a message — obtained by The Block from two sources — sent late on Nov. 10.

“Foremost I would like to make it abundantly clear that the VIP team was left completely in the dark and were in no way aware that FTX was insolvent or that customer assets were at any point not backed 1:1,” he said.

“I wanted to make sure clients didn’t hold ill will towards my team for telling them things are fine when they were also completely in the dark,” Tackett told The Block, in response to questions about the message. “They were also fooled.”

The VIP team struggled to handle withdrawals in the wake of Binance announcing it would sell its stake in FTX’s native token FTT. Those headwinds resulted in tensions between FTX leadership and the VIP team, according to several sources.

Tackett tweeted earlier today that his FTX Slack account had been deactivated. The Block contacted FTX for comment, but did not receive a response by 11.30 p.m. ET.

The news comes with an array of crypto companies — ranging from exchanges to venture capital investors — struggling to withdraw funds from FTX, after the stunning collapse of the company earlier this week.

Earlier today, the Wall Street Journal reported that FTX had lent Alameda Research, its sister trading firm, billions of dollars in customer assets.

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