Sam Bankman-Fried, ex-CEO of the crypto platform FTX, gave his version of the facts in his first public appearance since the collapse of his empire. He was not always credible.
Nervously shuffling on a chair in an anonymous office somewhere in the Bahamas, occasionally sipping a grapefruit-flavored sparkling water. For example, fallen crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) showed himself to the world for the first time since the bankruptcy of his crypto platform FTX on the night from Wednesday to Thursday, during an event of The New York Times.
Bankman-Fried was interviewed live via video link by American financial journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin. It immediately hit hard. Whether he is a bungler who has made one disastrous decision after another, or an outright fraud. “I was the CEO first and foremost, so whatever happened, I am responsible,” Bankman-Fried said. off shore. “It is clear that I made a lot of mistakes.”
Bank run
That would be the least. On November 11, FTX, one of the most popular cryptocurrency trading platforms in the world, asked the court for protection from its creditors. Bankman-Fried’s vehicle had run into liquidity problems after secretly funneling $10 billion from investors to Alameda Research, another crypto firm owned by Bankman-Fried. From there, some of that money even went to his own companies or accounts. As long as no one knew about it, it went well. But after American media dig up more and more details about the close ties and money flows between FTX and Alameda Research, this led to a real bank run on the platform in November. In three days, investors asked for $6 billion back, money that FTX had long since lost. Bankruptcy was the only option.
,,When I saw that bank run get going, the nerves kicked in”, Bankman-Fried looks back on it now. ,,It turned out to be an eventful week.” One with major financial consequences. Not only for the investors on FTX, who all together lost billions, also for the thirty-year-old, fallen crypto king himself. His wealth was once estimated at $ 26 billion, but today “barely” anything of that remains. “I have almost nothing left,” he said. “One credit card, linked to a bank account with $100,000 in it. That is it.”
‘Never deliberate fraud’
In the hour-long interview, Bankman-Fried said – in his own words against the advice of his lawyers – that he “never deliberately wanted to commit fraud.” He also denied knowing the full extent of Alameda’s exposure to FTX, claiming that he was “surprised” when he learned the amounts involved. Moreover, those amounts would not have been secretly passed on, but rather ‘by mistake’, due to the ‘confusing accounting of FTX’.
It was not very convincing at all. Bankman-Fried often beat around the bush, sometimes pondering a question for a very long time, then saying that he “still had to look up the details”, and sometimes not getting much further than repeating a question and then muttering something . He also remained silent about the reason why he has been in the Bahamas since the bankruptcy of FTX – where he also established the headquarters of his crypto company last year. ,,But how concerned are you about possible criminal consequences?”, the interviewer asked. Bankman-Fried stammered again. ,,I’m not focusing on that at the moment”, he said after a few seconds.