Ex-FTX Boss Bankman-Fried Denies Intent to Commit Fraud

Facts

• Speaking remotely to the New York Times DealBook Summit on Wednesday, Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and former CEO of bankrupted cryptocurrency exchange FTX, admitted he "screwed up,” however, he maintained that he never attempted to commit fraud.
• Earlier this month, Bankman-Fried resigned as CEO of FTX after the company declared bankruptcy due to a liquidity crisis and accusations of misappropriated customer funds. The firm currently owes its debtors $8B.
• Bankman-Fried said he never attempted to "commit fraud on anyone" and that he saw FTX "as a thriving business” and was “shocked by what happened this month."
• Bankman-Fried said he didn’t think he would be held criminally liable for what took place at FTX, but went on to say: “the real answer is that's not what I'm focusing on. There's going to be a time and place for me to think about myself and my own future, but I don't think this is it.”
• In the aftermath of FTX's bankruptcy, traders who stored their money on the platform have lost billions, and companies who had ties to FTX, like crypto lending firm BlockFi, have also filed for bankruptcy.

Sources: Guardian, Business Insider, Daily Wire, and New York Times.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by Market Watch. Bankman-Fried may be telling the truth about his intentions even though he’s at the heart of the FTX collapse. FTX was unorganized and largely mismanaged, and he failed at his job. But that doesn’t mean Bankman-Fried did anything illegal. This was a complex and unacceptable crypto meltdown yet there may not be malfeasance involved.
• Narrative B, as provided by Gizmodo. Bankman-Fried was hailed as a genius and the face of crypto’s future, but now we’re supposed to believe he didn’t know what he was doing. This wasn’t an honest mistake like bumping into someone on the street, it was a 30-year-old man misallocating funds from one company to prop up another company he had a hand in, namely the Alameda Research hedge fund. The FTX collapse wasn’t the result of a series of mistakes — it was a fraud.