Caroline Ellison / Worldoptimization

Submission 31,538

Part of a series on FTX Crypto Crash. [View Related Entries]

About

Caroline Ellison is an American business executive most well-known as the CEO of Alameda Research, a quantitative trading firm founded by Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) in 2018. She is rumored to have dated Bankman-Fried with an anonymous source cited by the Wall Street Journal alleging that her company, Alameda Research, was lent $10 billion by Bankman-Fried's cryptocurrency exchange FTX. Ellison is also known for her Tumblr blog worldoptimization, which surfaced in light of the November 2022 FTX bankruptcy scandal and crash. The page contained Ellison's musings about polyamorous love, sexuality and business prowess, with many of the posts being used in memes alongside other memes depicting Ellison herself.

History

Caroline Ellison was born in 1994 to Glenn Ellison, a U.S. economist and a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). According to LinkedIn, Ellison was a trader at Jane Street, a global proprietary trading firm from 2016-2018. Sam Bankman-Fried was also a trader at Jane Street from 2014-2017. She then moved to Alameda Research in 2018 as a trader, and three years later, she became CEO of the firm in 2021. ^[1]

Relationship With Sam Bankman-Fried

In 2022, Ellison was purported to be living with Bankman-Fried and various other executives from FTX in a luxury penthouse in the Bahamas.^[2] People working for FTX lived in the mansion, with roommates supposedly being in various romantic and polyamorous relationships with each other.

Ellison, the CEO of Alameda Research, was also purportedly a romantic partner of Sam Bankman-Fried and lived with him in the Bahamas at the time. A photo of Ellison supposedly taken at the penthouse shows her smiling against a backdrop of skyscrapers and was uploaded to her now-deleted Twitter account on an unknown date, which would later become an exploitable in various memes (seen below).

2022 FTX Crash

In early November 2022, FTX.com, the third-biggest cryptocurrency exchange, filed for bankruptcy and subsequently brought down the values of many other cryptocurrencies along with it, resulting in a crash. Key executive operators at FTX like founder Sam Friedman-Banks and his purported polyamorous partner Caroline Ellison soon became the subject of numerous memes, many using the previously mentioned image of her portrait.

For example, on November 12th, 2022 Twitter user @alifarhat79 posted a For The Better, Right? meme describing their relationship, which earned over 2,100 likes in less than a day (shown below).^[3]

Caroline Ellison's Tumblr Page Worldoptimization

Discourse about Ellison's since-deleted Tumblr^[4] page "worldoptimization" surfaced in mid-November 2022 due to the FTX crash and the alleged polycule between the employees and executives. On November 12th, 2022, Twitter^[5] user AutismCapital shared a screenshot of a worldoptimization Tumblr post, writing in the tweet's caption, "Caroline has a tumblr called 'worldoptimization.' Her kink is men who control most major world governments." The tweet received roughly 7,300 likes in three days (seen below). The featured Tumblr post outlined Ellison's opinions on "cute boy things," listing, "controlling major world governments" as one among many.

Twitter user @AutismCapital went on to post a series of screenshots from worldoptimization, including one where Ellison outlines the ideal setup for a polycule, advocating for a Chinese hierarchical harem system. The November 12th tweet gathered over 1,000 likes in three days (seen below, left). That same day, Twitter^[6] user @0xgodking posted a tweet showing a post from Ellison's Tumblr blog where she was soliciting "applications" to be someone's girlfriend. The tweet gathered over 400 likes in three days (seen below, right) and was reposted on November 13th by user @growing_daniel.^[10]

On November 13th, Twitter^[7] user @fbifemboy then posted screenshots of Ellison's career advice from the Tumblr account's posts and gathered over 1,000 likes in two days (seen below).

The aforementioned tweets began the semi-ironic mythologization of Ellison as a girlboss archetype.^[8] On November 13th, Twitter^[9] user wiki_early_life yassified Ellison, gaining roughly 1,900 likes in two days (seen below, left). She still received pushback from other commentators, however, with Twitter^[11]^[12] user @growing_daniel posting a series of tweets ironically sympathizing with her as someone who must have driven hundreds of debtors to suicide (seen below, right).

Sex Tape Leak

On November 16th, 2022, a website went up from someone claiming to be an FTX insider, saying that they would post a sex tape of Caroline Ellison, Sam Bankman-Field and other members of their polycule in order to "hold them accountable."^[13]

Cooperation With Federal Investigators

According to court filings unsealed on Wednesday, December 21st 2022, Caroline Ellison and another Alameda manager named Gary Wang both pleaded guilty to conspiracy and other fraud charges in connection with the FTX crypto scheme. Ellison confessed to being an "active participant" in the scheme and to taking orders from Bankman-Fried to defraud investors. She also agreed to cooperate with federal authorities investigating Bankman-Fried and others responsible.^[14]

The New York Post and other outlets had speculated she was collaborating with law enforcement at least a week earlier, posting an article on December 14th making that claim.^[15] Even before that, eagle-eyed social media users who spotted a person looking a lot like Ellison at a New York coffee shop on December 4th speculated she was there meeting with the feds. @AutismCapital shared a purported photo of Ellison at the coffee shop (seen below) earning over 17,000 likes in three weeks.^[16]

According to court documents, the deal on the table for Ellison (as of December 22nd) waived almost all criminal charges but required her to pay $250,000 bail and agree not to leave the continental US. Some posters, like @HsakaTrades, who received almost 1,400 likes in less than a day on December 22nd, congratulated her for getting such a good deal (seen below).^[17]

Sam Bankman-Fried

Sam Bankman-Fried, also known as SBF, is an American businessperson responsible for the FTX cryptocurrency exchange that was founded in 2019. He rapidly became a billionaire during the early 2020s and a major donor and investor to various groups and causes because of his work in crypto, including the DNC. In November 2022, FTX and Bankman-Fried's fortunes collapsed in the FTX Crypto Crash amid allegations of wrongdoing and financial crimes, which subsequently spawned a wave of discussions and memes mocking him online. SBF's purported relationship with Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison was also a topic of viral discussion around the same time.