FTX fallout: SBF “regrets bankruptcy” and says he “f**ked up. Big. Multiple times”
11:08, 17 November 2022
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried says he regrets filing his crypto empire for bankruptcy – just four days after starting the proceedings.
The comments by the 30-year-old former poster boy of the crypto world came in a bizarre Twitter exchange with a VOX reporter, later published by the website.
The cryptocurrency exchange platform FTX and its sister firm Alameda Research started Chapter 11 proceedings last Friday after FTX couldn’t keep up with client exodus. Bankman-Fried also stepped down as FTX CEO at the time.
But Bankman-Fried – known by crypto followers as ‘SBF’ – now says that if he had kept trying to fundraise instead, “withdrawals would be opening up in a month with customers fully whole”.
“You know what was maybe my biggest single fuck up?” the entrepreneur asked Vox reporter, Kelsey Piper. “Chapter 11,” he wrote and claimed that had FTX/Alameda not declared bankruptcy “everything would be 70% fixed right now.”
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FTX CEO: SBF ‘does not speak on FTX/Alameda’s behalf’
But new FTX chief executive John Ray quickly sought to distance the company from Bankman-Fried’s comments, in which the FTX founder, currently under investigation by both the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Department of Justice, also wrote “Fuck regulators”. FTX also dismissed his previous statements about crypto needing more regulation as just “PR”.
Ray, a bankruptcy lawyer who oversaw the recovery of billions of dollars from defunct energy trading firm Enron, who was appointed to over as CEO at FTX last Friday, said in a statement: “Mr Bankman-Fried has no ongoing role at FTX, FTX US, or Alameda Research Ltd. and does not speak on their behalf.”
‘Complete failure of corporate controls’
SBF maintained during the interview that FTX never transferred their client deposits to Alameda. When pressed as to whether the firm was lending out customer funds, he said: “It wasn’t quite lending them out – it was messier and more organic than that; each step was in isolation rational and reasonable, and then when I finally added it all up last week, it wasn’t”.
“Oh FTX doesn’t have a bank account, I guess people can wire to Alameda’s to get money on FTX. .... three years later .....oh f**k, it looks like people wired $8bn to Alameda and, oh god about that stub account that corresponded to that and so it was never delivered to FTX.”
“I fucked up. Big. Multiple times,” admitted SBF.
After VOX published SBF's conversation with Piper, the FTX founder said it was not meant to be public: “Last night I talked to a friend of mine. They published my messages. Those were not intended to be public, but I guess they are now,” SBF wrote in a tweet.
SBF's philanthropic family foundation donated money to Vox for a 2023 reporting project. VOX said the project is now on pause.
FTX’s new CEO Ray wrote in the bankruptcy filing of “unprecedented” poor management practices by his predecessor. “Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here,” he said.
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