This may be a "culture gap" (or language gap) between crypto and traditional finance. The FT text directly addresses the question that we're told "No one [is] asking." They asked where's the money, and they're exposing the fact that no coherent response has been forthcoming. That's reporting. The likely interpretation of that piece of reporting is crystal clear to the intended readership. (I.e., the money is probably…
1. pretend to have customers
2. pretend those customers have deposits
3. issue Tether to front those deposits
4. pump up their favorite coins with their newly minted Tethers
My first suspicion would be that FTX was more fraudulent to its investors than people claim.
It pretended to have a lot more customers & deposits than it actually did to pump up FTT, to get real money from investors looking for a real business rather than crypto BS.
Mainstream institutional money is gigantic, and it's mainly refusing to invest in coins. However, it's not afraid to invest in companies selling shovels to the gold rush.
You can get a lot more money by defrauding institutional money than you can by defrauding retail.
Is there hard evidence this isn't what happened?
All I see is that the records were so bad they have no idea who's owed what.
That seems like a really convenient way to cover up you didn't actually have customers in the first place and everything was a fraud.