Sam Bankman Fried is in trouble. He’s facing up to 115 years in prison if he’s convicted of federal fraud and conspiracy charges. And yet the embattled founder of collapsed crypto exchange FTX — who has pleaded not guilty and is out on a $250 million bond while awaiting trial — figured it’d be a great idea to write about his perspective on the saga in a Substack newsletter.
In his first post, which is ostensibly about the collapse of FTX International, Bankman-Fried (aka SBF) claims that “I didn’t steal funds, and I certainly didn’t stash billions away.” SBF notes that FTX US (which serves customers in America) “remains fully solvent and should be able to return all customers’ funds.” He added that FTX International still has billions of dollars in assets and that he is “dedicating nearly all of my personal assets to customers.” SBF, who once had a net worth of approximately $26.5 billion, said at the end of November that he had $100,000 in his bank account, though he pledged to give almost all of his personal shares in Robinhood to customers.
This post covers much the same ground as SBF covered in the many interviews he gave between FTX’s collapse in November, and his arrest last month. He discusses the multiple crypto market crashes in 2022 and a tweet from Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao that sparked a run on FTX’s FTT token and prompted the implosion of his exchange. SBF also discusses how he was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in order to protect FTX. He notes that many of his numbers are approximates since he was kept out of FTX’s systems by the people overseeing its bankruptcy proceedings.
It’s even more fascinating to see what SBF doesn’t address. He fails to mention the fact that FTX cofounder Zixiao Wang and former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison pleaded guilt to fraud charges, and are cooperating with prosecutors.
SBF has continued to give interviews about the situation and tweet about it while he is out on bail. Despite the Securities and Exchange Commission filing a complaint against him citing his tweets and comments in an interview in December, SBF has continued to give interviews and tweet about the situation. Maybe Substack will also be a mistake.
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