[kosievdmerwe]

Ponzi schemes in general refer to schemes where you use one customer's money to pay another customer's "returns on investment" without actually doing anything productive with the money.

The core crime alleged in the FTX situation is that SBF and conspirators used customer funds as their piggy bank. Both FTX and Alameda were at their core legitimate businesses, but instead of funding themselves and their founders' exploits with money that was properly theirs, they used money that they were supposed to safeguard.

Eventually, Alameda lost so much money that they could no longer hide what they were doing and had to declare bankruptcy. However, importantly, the crime would be that they improperly took the money in the first place, not that they lost it.