Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) has been talking a lot more since his exchange collapsed a few weeks ago, as he’s spoken at the New York Times Dealbook Summit, sat down with Good Morning America host George Stephanopoulos, and recently conducted an interview with New York Magazine. While doing all of these interviews, SBF has revealed very little and crypto supporters believe SBF is being portrayed as the “boy next door” who simply made a bad mistake, and people are wondering why the FTX co-founder is being treated so delicately.
Crypto community believes SBF’s media tour is only to ‘cleanse his image’, portraying him as the ‘boy next door’ who made a mistake
While Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) has spoken to New York Times contributor Andrew Ross Sorkin, Good Morning America’s George Stephanopoulos, and New York Magazine’s Jen Wiczner, there are still a lot of unanswered questions in the crypto community. For example, during its dealbook negotiations, SBF insisted that it “did not knowingly co-mingle funds.” SBF apologized to a question from the audience when he asked why the SBF decided to steal his life savings. “I am deeply sorry for what happened,” SBF Explained At the Dealbook event.
After all of SBF’s interviews, the crypto community hasn’t seemed satisfied with the former FTX executive’s answers, and people have wondered why he’s being treated like “the boy next door.” Posts on social media show people are disappointed that SBF received a round of applause after the Dealbook event.
One person said, “A few months ago, a Bahamian man was sentenced to 2 years in prison for stealing $6 worth of hotdogs.” Tweeted, “SBF is a swindler who stole billions of dollars from millions of customers in a historic fraud. He is currently on a corporate media tour garnering sympathy, praise, [and] Applause.
So far, SBF has blamed his misfortunes on “poorly-labeled accounting” practices, and the fact that he doesn’t know how to code. While he stressed that he “didn’t knowingly co-mingle funds,” people familiar with the matter said SBF “lent billions of dollars worth of customer assets to fund risky bets” using his quantitative trading firm Alameda Research.
Other reports said Alameda Research bought a relatively unknown over-the-counter (OTC) desk “to handle FTX banking”. Speaking with New York Magazine, SBF was asked what happened to the $10 billion in client assets that appeared to have been lost.
“We should have had way better accounting in place,” SBF replied during his interview with Jen Wieczner. “We should have had way better controls in place.” He also detailed that accounting mistakes were made at a time back “when FTX didn’t have bank accounts.” He noted that Alameda had a sizable margin position, and one that “was not going to be closable in a liquid way in order to make good on its obligations.”
By mid-2022 Alameda’s margin had become too large, and it had moved from a “somewhat risky position” to “a position that was too large to be manageable during a liquidity crisis, and that could seriously threaten capacity.” Will put in.” Distribute customer funds.
SBF claims Alameda’s bad bets did not involve Terra’s LUNA, but they did occur roughly around the same time frame. As far as the poor accounting that took place, while FTX could not get a bank account, somehow a significant debt position tricked the executive and the “effective position was billions of dollars bigger than it appeared to be.”
Similar to the NYT Dealbook event, SBF said that one problem was that Almeida was not under their control, and that they had not run the company for years. Often in SBF interviews, he forgets the fact that FTX, Token FTT, and Alameda Research have been around since 2019. Speaking with Wizner, the SBF said:
The problem was that Alameda had gotten leveraged. And Alameda is not, like, a company that I monitor day-to-day. It’s not a company I run. It’s not a company I have run for the last couple [of] years.
SBF told the DealBook event audience that his firm felt things were going downhill on Nov. 6, but the former FTX CEO did not explain what happened to the $333 million in BTC that was lost between Nov. 6 and Nov. 7, 2022. disappeared. The SBF did not elaborate on why clients were repeatedly told that their assets would be safe if they did not use margin positions, and why Alameda and FTX were so close, despite the SBF’s insistence that they There were different organizations.
To this day, there are still many unanswered questions and people believe SBF’s media tour is being leveraged to clean up his image. It seems that saying “sorry” over and over, and over again, is just not cutting the mustard and the crypto community still wants hard answers from the now-disgraced crypto exchange frontman. However, the community doesn’t believe they will get such answers from SBF’s current media tour.
