Sam Bankman-Fried certainly won’t go quietly into the night.
With a crypto empire in ruins, multiple federal investigations, and years of litigation hanging over his head, the founder of FTX has chosen to face his critics face-to-face and engage in a full-blown media attack.
Just this week, he gave an interview to Axios, had a long beach phone conversation with crypto video blogger Tiffany Fong, posted online and appeared on Wednesday by video link at The New York Times DealBook Summit.
Most CEOs facing similar challenges will keep quiet.usually on the advice of their attorney), but not Bankman-Fried, who chose to try to twist the story in extremely unfiltered ways, especially in regards to reports that FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange founded by Bankman-Fried founder, has lent his family office hedge fund billions of dollars in client money, Alameda Research.
Here are the 10 craziest things he’s said in recent hours and days:
1. Is FTX a Ponzi scheme?
“I have a mission,” Bankman-Fried said at the DealBook Summit on Wednesday. “Obviously I didn’t do a good job of it. Obviously I’ve made a lot of mistakes, things that I’d be willing to give up in exchange. I have never tried to scam anyone. I see it as a thriving business and I am shocked by what has happened this month.”
2. Does Alameda attack the FTX piggy bank?
“I didn’t mean to mix money,” he said at the DealBook Summit. “I am not trying to combine funds.
3. Really? Serious? Is Alameda trying to attack the FTX piggy bank?
“I do not run Alameda. I don’t know what’s going on,” he told a follow-up question at the DealBook Summit.
4. So how did the FTX customer’s funds end up being used by Alameda?
“It was a messy mix of things – a lot of things I should have grasped and a lot of things I should have been more cautious of,” he told vlogger Tiffany Fong.
5. Lawyers? Who needs a lawyer?
“The first thing they said was, ‘Sam, you’ve got to promise you’ll never say you’re wrong again.’ I told them to go fuck themselves. I don’t think they know what they’re talking about,” he told Fong.
6. Is FTX really his “personal territory”?
He said in Interview with Axios.
7. What does he think about talking to reporters?
“A boring story won’t sell. And so they’re going to try to ask me questions as provocative as possible, and you know, whatever it is, how it is, but like it’s a bit perverted about what’s going on. out,” he said in a phone call with Fung.
8. Is there a secret tunnel to transfer money from FTX to Alameda?
“I don’t even know how to code. I can’t build some backdoors into the system. I can barely use the system,” he told Fung.
9. Why did he let people in the Bahamas withdraw money and not someone else?
“You don’t want to be in a country with a lot of angry people and you don’t want your country to be merged into a country with a lot of angry people,” he admitted to Fung.
10. Did he give money to Republicans too?
“All my Republican donations are black but it’s not for regulatory reasons, it’s reporters panicking when you donate to the Republican Party and I don’t want to deal with the issue. that issue,” he told Fung.
