FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Denies Fraud Attempt on Exchange

Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX founder who resigned as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) after the cryptocurrency exchange filed for bankruptcy protection has denied any connection to the fraud on FTX. He further apologized admitting his errors including the fact that he didn’t do a good job of performing his responsibility to regulators, customers, and investors. 

During an interview at the New York Times DealBook Summit with Andrew Ross Sorkin, a columnist, SBF who joined from the Bahamas said “I made a lot of mistakes. There are things I would give anything to be able to do over again. I didn’t ever try to commit fraud on anyone.”

He mentioned that his aim was never to commit fraud and that he was equally shocked at the turnout of the event at FTX. “I saw it as a thriving business and I was shocked by what happened this month,” Bankman-Fried explained. The 30-year-old disgraced founder’s participation was greeted with so much animosity amongst the crypto community members.

SBF Still Under Global Investigation 

This has been the case since the implosion and bankruptcy filing of the FTX Derivative Exchange, its sister trading firm Alameda Research and the other associate businesses. Many regulators have launched several investigations into how FTX fell and the events that contributed to it including the role which the former CEO played.  

One key question which has been on the lips of many is how the now-bankrupt crypto exchange ended up with a deficit of $8 billion on its balance sheet. There are still suspicions as to if FTX mishandled customers’ funds and/or lent them to its sister company Alameda Research.

When asked about how much he had left, Bankman-Fried said he had only $100,000 claiming that he put all that he had into FTX.

SBF also mentioned that he has only one working credit card at the moment. The period when Binance turned down Alameda Research’s offer to buy out its FTX token (FTT) holdings were when SBF said he noticed a problem. 

“November 6, that was the date that the tweet about FTT came out. By late on November 6 we were putting together all the information. When I started to think a bit more about this. um, you know, I was nervous that that would lead to substantial losses for Alameda and that it would be a bit messy,” SBF said