Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of near-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, has been on a media tour since November 30 to try to rewrite the overnight demise of his empire. me.
According to him, everything that happens is the fault of bad luck. He knows nothing and has no intention of defrauding the investors and customers of his two leading companies — FTX and hedge fund Alameda Research, is also a trading platform.
“I made a lot of mistakes,” he said speak in an interview with the New York Times/DealBook. “There are things that I would give anything to do over and over again. I’ve never tried to scam anyone.”
Bankman-Fried’s media hack is all the more surprising, given the ongoing regulatory investigations. It is not yet clear if they will be charged. But the former merchant doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to testify before Congress.
Contrary to his hopes, his tour has so far failed to shift public opinion in his favor. Calls to put him in jail continued to spread on social media. The more he talks, the more negative comments he has on social media, especially as millions of FTX customers and investors don’t know if they can get their money back after the company filed for bankruptcy. Chapter 11 bankruptcy on November 11 after a bankruptcy. Liquidity crunch.
‘The big house’
One of the most influential voices has just joined calls for his imprisonment. This is Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla (TSLA) – Get a free report, SpaceX and Twitter. The richest man in the world believes it’s time for Bankman-Fried to go to jail.
It all started with a Twitter thread in which he claimed that the formerly fallen crypto king was bad at the video game League of Legends, aka LoL.
“SBF plays LoL very badly. Nuff said,” Techno King, known at Tesla, posted on Twitter on December 3, referring to Bankman-Fried’s low Bronze III rank in the game.
“SBF doesn’t need to be mentioned anymore except for his court date,” one Twitter user commented, referring to Bankman-Fried’s initials.
“Agreed,” Musk quipped. “Let’s give him the adult waiting time in the big house and move on.”
The majority of comments that followed agreed with Musk.
“Martha Stewart goes to jail for little!” said one Twitter user.
“I can’t believe some media is trying to make him seem less guilty,” another user wrote.
“A big timeout and all his accomplices,” added another user.
It’s important to point out that Musk has a short and complicated relationship with Bankman-Fried. The latter wanted to participate in funding Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.
Musk vs. Bankman-Fried
The tech mogul stated at the time that FTX filed for bankruptcy that Bankman-Fried “let’s go [his] bs . detector.” But one semafor article then claimed, supported by text message, that Musk had asked Bankman-Fried to move his $100 million worth of Twitter shares into Twitter 2.0, but Musk refused.
“Like I said, neither me nor Twitter receive any investment from SBF/FTX. Your post is a lie. Now, I want to ask again, how much of yours does SBF own? Musk talked about the article.
“Semafor is owned by SBF. This is a major conflict of interest in your reporting. The integrity of the press is 🗑️,” Musk said at the time.
Bankman-Fried is one of the shareholders of Semafor.
As a cryptocurrency exchange, FTX executed orders for customers, took their cash, and bought cryptocurrencies on their behalf. FTX acts as a custodian, holding the client’s cryptocurrency.
FTX then used customers’ crypto assets, through its sister company’s trading arm Alameda Research, to generate cash through borrowing or market-making. The borrowed FTX funds were used to bail out other crypto institutions in the summer of 2022.
At the same time, FTX is using the cryptocurrency they are issuing, FTT, as collateral on Accounting balance sheet. This is a significant exposure, due to the risk of concentration and volatility of the FTT.
FTX’s insolvency stems from a lack of liquidity when customers try to withdraw funds from the platform. The shortfall appears to be the result of Bankman-Fried allegedly transferring $10 billion in customer funds from FTX to Alameda Research.
