FTX founder denies fraud when the company makes its first public appearance since bankruptcy
On the morning of December 1, Beijing time, Sam Bankman-fried (Sam Bankman-Fried), founder and former CEO of the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, tried to deny that he had committed fraud. FTX made his first public appearance this week since his collapse shocked investors and left creditors facing losses totaling billions of dollars.
Speaking at the Dealbook summit this week, Mr Bankman-fried said he did not deliberately mix client money on the FTX platform with that of Alameda Research, a proprietary trading firm. Earlier, people familiar with the matter said that FTX had run out of liquidity after Bankman-Fried secretly transferred $10 billion of FTX client money to Alameda Research. This resulted in a loss of at least $1 billion in customer funds.
Mr Bankman-Fried argues that the company did not "secretly transfer" funds, but only misread "confusing internal tags".
On November 11th FTX filed for bankruptcy and Bankman-Fried resigned as chief executive. Earlier, traders withdrew $6 billion from the platform in three days, while rival Yuan an abandoned the deal to rescue FTX.
"by the evening of November 6, we put all the data together," Bankman-Fried said. obviously, this is part of the monitoring market that I will continue to watch. when we see these data, there is indeed a serious problem. " He also said he had "never tried to commit fraud" and that he personally did not believe he had any criminal responsibility. "the real answer is that this is not my focus. I will have my own time and place to think about myself and my future."
The explosion of FTX quickly tarnished the 30-year-old entrepreneur. A year ago, Forbes estimated that Bankman-Fried had a net worth of $26.5 billion because of the cryptocurrency boom. After launching FTX in 2019, he also became an influential political donor, promising to donate most of his earnings to non-profit organizations.
Since FTX filed for bankruptcy, Bankman-Fried has made a U-turn to the outside world. He told reporters that his support for the cryptocurrency regulatory framework was "only for public relations purposes". His discussion of ethics in the industry is at least partly a cover.
Mr Bankman-Fried also said he was "confused" about why FTX's US entities did not handle customer withdrawals. At present, withdrawals from FTX's US and international customers have been suspended. "as far as I know, all US clients and US regulated businesses have no problem at least in terms of customer assets," he said. " In addition, the derivatives contract of a US subsidiary of FTX is "fully collateralised".
