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Netflix reveals main cast for upcoming FTX series

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Netflix reveals main cast for upcoming FTX series

Netflix has rounded out the main cast of its upcoming FTX collapse drama The Altruists, revealing six actors who have been chosen to appear alongside Julia Garner’s Caroline Ellison and Anthony Boyle’s Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF).

The series will reportedly cover the massive growth of SBF’s crypto exchange between 2019 and 2021 and its spectacular collapse in 2022 which wiped billions of dollars from the crypto market. 

Netflix says the series will follow SBF and Ellison, “two hyper-smart, ambitious young idealists who tried to remake the global financial system in the blink of an eye… before they were accused of stealing $8 billion.”

Here are the major cast members announced so far. 

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Changpeng Zhao 

Terry Chen will be playing the role of Changpeng Zhao. 

Chen starred in the 2000 comedy Almost Famous and played a corrupt Chinese businessman in season two of House of Cards. The 51-year-old will be stepping into the shoes of SBF’s biggest rival. 

Terry Chen discusses his work on Almost Famous.

Read more: Binance probed by DoJ, files lawsuit against WSJ

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Zhao and SBF met on occasions during FTX’s heyday, but Zhao would later contribute to the firm’s collapse when he announced that his crypto exchange Binance would liquidate the FTX-linked asset “FTT.”

Dr. George Lerner

William Mapother will be playing the role of FTX’s company therapist, Dr. George Lerner. 

Lerner was SBF’s psychiatrist during the FTX years and was tasked with coaching 100 of the firm’s employees through its most chaotic period. Some employees reportedly wouldn’t share everything they knew with Lerner out of fear that SBF would find out. 

Mapother’s character reportedly “knew SBF best,” and would help him to explore his “seeming rejection of earthly pleasures.” 

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Mapother has previously starred in the TV series Lost, and is known for his work in The Mentalist, and In The Bedroom. He is also Tom Cruise’s cousin, and co-founded the film financing firm Slated.   

Sarah Fisher Ellison

Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off star Jennifer Grey has been cast to play Caroline Ellison’s mother, Sarah Fisher Ellison.

Ellison is a senior lecturer at the MIT Department of Economics, who, alongside her husband, struggled to grasp the damage their daughter caused while working for FTX and pleaded for leniency in her sentencing

Duncan Rheingans-Yoo

Canadian actor Hudson Williams shot to fame in the hit hockey series Heated Rivalry, and will play the role of Duncan Rheingans-Yoo. 

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The full lineup of major roles in the Netflix FTX drama The Altruists.

Read more: Sam Bankman-Fried was planning Tucker Carlson interview for years

Rheingans-Yoo co-founded crypto trading firm Modulo Capital, which received $475 million from FTX shortly before the exchange collapsed. Fellow co-founder Lily Zhang will be played by Marianna Phung, who starred in the series Poly is the New Monogamy.

A bankrupt FTX would later claw back $460 million from the firm. 

Sam Bankman-Fried

The most important role in the series goes to Anthony Boyle, who will play FTX’s curly-haired CEO. 

Boyle has starred in House of Guinness, Manhunt, Say Nothing, and featured in the Tolkien and Tetris movies. 

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SBF oversaw the operation that misappropriated billions of dollars worth of customer funds and used them to make investments through FTX’s sister firm, Alameda Research.  

These days, SBF is spending his days serving out a 25-year sentence in jail while trying, and failing, to secure a pardon from US President Donald Trump. 

Read more: Sam Bankman-Fried begs Trump for pardon, gets bipartisan ‘No’

Caroline Ellison

Starring alongside Boyle will be Julia Garner, playing the role of SBF’s romantic partner and former FTX exec, Caroline Ellison. 

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Ellison and SBF worked together at trading firm Jane Street before the pair moved on to FTX. Ellison helped SBF grow his empire until it collapsed and she would later testify against him in court.  

She said that for the duration of their relationship, SBF was her boss. At one court trial, she claimed, “I wanted more from our relationship but often felt he was distant or not paying much attention to me.”

Garner recently starred in the Oscar-nominated horror Weapons, and is known for her work in Ozark, Marvel’s Fantastic Four: First Steps, and The Assistant.

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Julia Garner discusses The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

Read more: When will FTX customers get their money back?

Lucy and Hannah

Playing the unknown characters of Lucy and Hannah are Hannah Galway and Elizabeth Adams. 

Galway is known for her work on Billy the Kid and The Institute, while Adams is known for The Wayward and Trouble in Suburbia. It’s not clear how their characters fit into the FTX saga.

FTX execs 

Other roles that have already been cast include a number of former FTX executives.

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Among them are former Alameda Research CEO, Sam Trabucco, who’ll be played by Andor and Alien Earth star Alex Lawther. Trabucco resigned before the collapse of FTX and seemingly disappeared, leading to rumours that he was on the run. 

Another prominent exec who will be featured is Ryan Salame, who’ll be played by Matt Rife. The former FTX exec used customer funds to help build SBF’s political influence through illegal political donations. 

Read more: Whoever’s running SBF’s X account keeps following memecoin shills

Other execs set to appear include Constance Wang, Nishad Singh, Gary Wang, and Claire Watanabe, who will be played by Madison Hu, Karan Sonit, Euguen Young, and Naomi Okada, respectively. 

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Paul Reiser will play SBF’s dad, Joe Bankman, while SBF’s mum, Barbara Fried, will be played by Robin Weigert. 

SBF’s social fixer and former head of FTX luxury partnerships, Lauren Platt, will be played by Maddie Hasson. 

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Fairshake’s $10 million Illinois misfire marks first big hitch in crypto political surge

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Crypto PAC Fairshake leaps into first midterm Senate race with $5 million in Alabama

Losing a race is unusual for the crypto industry’s political action committee, Fairshake, which has recorded a dominant record in the past two congressional elections. But the Illinois primaries this week saw its biggest-ever setback, likely to conclude with a new member of the Senate next year being somebody the PAC spent more than $10 million trying to defeat.

Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton won her Democratic primary, and her state’s Democrat lean means she’s likely to be its next senator after the November general election. One of Fairshake’s affiliates had devoted millions to purchase opposition advertising in that race and to support two of her opponents — representing more than 5% of the funds it’s said it had on-hand this year to devote to the congressional contests.

Not only did that money fail to win the outcome the group aimed for, but Stratton may eventually be a member of the 100-member Senate in which a single lawmaker can have a very potent influence, and she’ll be well aware of the industry’s efforts to oppose her. Crypto advocacy group Stand With Crypto, which evaluates politicians and political candidates, graded Stratton with an “F” on digital assets issues, even though she doesn’t have a significant personal record on crypto policy apart from the state’s industry-opposed regulatory regime signed by her boss last year.

“If you support pro-crypto policies, we will show up big,” Fairshake spokesman Geoff Vetter said in a statement. “If you oppose crypto and American innovation, we will show up big. That message is now clear at both the state level and federal level.”

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The industry had mixed results in Illinois, supporting three pro-crypto candidates who won their primaries, and one other who didn’t. A person familiar with the PAC’s strategies said that it saw the loss as a one-off and that it was unlikely that other candidates it opposes down the road will have similar campaign resources they can tap.

Starting with the 2024 elections, Fairshake — primarily backed by Coinbase, a16z and Ripple — has targeted multiple Senate races in which it spent more than $10 million trying to influence the outcome. In its biggest spend in the last cycle, it devoted a towering $40 million to oppose former Senator Sherrod Brown, the Ohio Democrat who as ex-chairman of the Senate Banking Committee stood in the way of crypto legislation. (Brown is trying for a comeback this year, though Fairshake hasn’t yet announced its plan for Brown’s challenge of Senator Jon Husted.)

La Shawn Ford, who won his Illinois 7th District congressional primary to potentially join the House of Representatives next year, was another of Fairshake’s targets in a race in which the PAC spent almost $2.5 million. He accused the PAC of pumping out misleading and defamatory accusations in its ads. While he may represent a future political opponent for the sector, Fairshake celebrated wins for Donna Miller, Melissa Bean and incumbent Representative Nikki Budzinski in other House races in that state.

In 2024, Fairshake and its affiliates supported 53 candidates who ended up in Congress, losing in just five races, though many of the favored candidates were clear frontrunners. The super PAC was widely seen as establishing an industry model for a campaign-finance strategy in which more than $100 million devoted to congressional races (often primaries in districts in which one party has a dominant position) can influence the outcomes for dozens of seats. Fairshake purposefully didn’t craft its political ads to reference its own main aim to foster crypto, but it instead made ads based on whatever was the biggest political vulnerability it saw in opponents or positive points it noted in allies.

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Fairshake has been very public about the $193 million war chest it started the campaign season with. The funds aren’t just an election tool. Crypto lobbyists and insiders have acknowledged that it also acts as a caution to sitting lawmakers weighing crypto legislation now moving through Congress. Members know that their decisions on crypto bills could bring either millions of dollars in support or opposition in their campaigns, often far exceeding the amount of money that congressional campaigns can raise from direct donors.

Fairshake doesn’t expect to win everything, but it does expect to win most of the races they get involved with, the person said, and it’ll make the point that opposing crypto innovation will be expensive for politicians.

Some candidates that Fairshake opposed in the past did go on to support crypto initiatives, but Stratton criticized the “MAGA-backed crypto bros” that opposed her. Her crypto intentions in the Senate, if she gets there, remain to be seen.

Read More: Crypto campaign PAC Fairshake marks first wins in 2026 U.S. congressional primaries

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Kalshi CEO Fires Back against Arizona Criminal Charges as ‘Total Overstep‘

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Kalshi CEO Fires Back against Arizona Criminal Charges as ‘Total Overstep‘

The prediction markets co-founder said that the company would “abide by court decisions“ but signaled that the charges were based partly on political bias and media attention.

Tarek Mansour, co-founder and CEO of prediction markets platform Kalshi, has pushed back against criminal charges filed by Arizona authorities this week, claiming that they were a “total overstep” and “not about gambling.”

On Tuesday, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced charges against the companies behind Kalshi, alleging that the company operated an “illegal gambling business in Arizona without a license” and offered illegal election wagering. Mansour said in a Wednesday Bloomberg interview that Mayes was attempting to “subvert the judicial process” by filing charges without a court decision in Kalshi’s own lawsuit against Arizona authorities last week. 

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“We see this as a total overstep and we look forward to fighting it in court,” said Mansour.