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‘I Didn’t Steal Funds And I Certainly Didn’t Keep Billions’: Fallen FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Blames The Crypto Giant’s Implosion On A ‘Wider Market Crash’, Claiming Sister Company Alameda Drag Them Down below in a scathing new Substack post
- In a Substack post, Sam Bankman-Fried blames the FTX collapse on Alameda
- He suggests his collapsed company could be bailed out in a post on Thursday.
- He was ‘strong’ to name a recovery CEO who filed for bankruptcy, he says
Sam Bankman-Fried has published a 2,000-word blog post defending and explaining the collapse of his crypto exchange FTX, which he attributes to his sister company Alameda Research.
In a Substack post on Thursday morning, titled ‘FTX Premortem Summary’, Bankman-Fried claims he was ‘forced’ to appoint a new CEO who filed for bankruptcy and could have paid off with more time. to the clients.
“I think if FTX International had had a few weeks, it probably could have used its illiquid assets and capital to raise enough funding to bring clients substantially full,” he wrote.
He also suggested that, even now, it could potentially save the collapsing company, saying: “If FTX International were to restart, there would be a real chance that customers would recover substantially.”
Bankman-Fried secretly transferred $10 billion of FTX client funds to trading firm Alameda Research. Much of that money has disappeared, and he has estimated that he has lost investors between $1 and $2 billion.
Sam Bankman-Fried published a 2,000-word blog post defending and explaining the collapse of his FTX cryptocurrency exchange.
“I did not steal funds, and I certainly did not stash billions,” Bankman-Fried wrote in the Thursday morning post. He also shared a very rough balance sheet of FTX before handing over the company to suggest he wasn’t as deep into it.
‘Almost all of my assets were and still are usable to support FTX clients. For example, I have offered to contribute almost all of my personal shares in Robinhood to clients.
He said that despite paying $5bn to clients during the final days before insolvency, $8bn ‘of variable liquidity’ was still available.
However, he acknowledges that the lack of liquidity and FTX’s inability to pay clients was tied to a turbulent cryptocurrency market that saw Alameda suffer in 2022.
“Alameda lost about 80 percent of its asset value over the course of 2022, due to a series of market crashes,” Bankman-Fried wrote. “FTX was affected by the decline of Alameda.”
Alameda Research, which he described as a “contagion” that “spread to FTX,” was at one point run by Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend, Caroline Ellison.
Ellison told a New York court last month that, as the company’s CEO, she had access to an “unlimited” amount of money from FTX clients.
Alameda Research, which he described as a “contagion” that “spread to FTX,” was at one point run by Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend Caroline Ellison (pictured)
Once again, he took aim at the Sullivan & Cromwell law firm, which he says worked with FTX’s general counsel to force him to appoint chief insolvency officer John Ray to take over.
‘S&C and GC were the main parties threatening me and threatening to appoint their self-picked candidate as CEO of FTX, including for a solvent entity in FTX USA, who then filed for Chapter 11 and chose S&C as counsel for debtor entities’, he wrote.