FTX’s sullied ex-CEO, truly a trader at heart, won’t stop taking giant risks.
Pleading the fifth may well be one of the best-known pieces of legal advice, at least in America, but Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) can’t stop opening his mouth and giving interviews.
Wednesday (Nov. 30), the failed ex-CEO spoke one-on-one with prominent journalist and founder of The New York Times’ DealBook, Andrew Ross Sorkin, during a virtual appearance at the media company’s titular DealBook Summit — where tickets go for around $2,500 a pop.
It is unclear why The New York Times continues to give SBF a platform, and less clear why they continue handling him with what has been described by those following the FTX case as kid gloves.
The formerly heralded founder remains prominently featured on the DealBook Summit event site, above world leaders and CEOs of businesses like TikTok, Amazon, and even BlackRock’s Larry Fink, who took a $24 million haircut on his own firm’s investment in FTX.
SBF’s bio for the event reads, “Sam Bankman-Fried is a 29-year-old American investor, entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is the co-founder of FTX US, a U.S.-based cryptocurrency exchange and is also the co-founder of FTX.com, a non-U.S. cryptocurrency derivatives exchange.”
Hardly an accurate or up to date description, to say the least, and one that verges on journalistically embarrassing for a supposed paper of record — as well as offensive to the hundreds of thousands of everyday people who lost their money trusting SBF and FTX.
But it gives a good insight into the questions the Times’ Sorkin would go on to ask SBF, who appeared virtually on a giant screen at the event and showed little remorse while admitting to even less.
“I didn’t knowingly co-mingle funds,” he said, brushing the billions that were mingled under aw-shucks rugs of “lack of oversight,” and “pretty big mistakes I’m embarrassed to have made,” while repeating to Sorkin that he “wasn’t running Alameda,” and seemingly casting the majority of blame on Caroline Ellison, Alameda’s co-CEO.
There would be no “gotcha” moment from the Gray Lady.
Just a stern, paternal tone as viewers were treated to bunch of trader-speak from SBF barely disguising the same lack of accountability that landed FTX and Alameda in such hot water to begin with, burning their customers along the way.
While SBF has repeatedly admitted that he “f***ed up” and has apologized both on Twitter and in a letter to his one-time employees, he still believes he can fix things — those “things” being the evaporation of a company once valued at $32 billion, and the over a million creditors owed billions of their own misappropriated money.
Since FTX imploded earlier this month, sending the broader crypto industry into a tailwind and entangled peer firms to an early grave, the once-heralded evangelist hasn’t been able to stop trying to tell his story, no matter the tatters his own reputation is in.
And that story seems to be, “Don’t worry, I’ve got this.”
SBF is currently under investigation by numerous agencies, and has been named in civil suits being brought by investors. A good a time as any to be quiet and ride things out.
But according to his DealBook Summit appearance, he isn’t worried about, or focused on, jail time.
“I’ve had a bad month,” he said to laughs from the crowd, even finding time himself to chuckle at some of Sorkin’s questions.
Later, SBF would declare that FTX US is completely solvent and could make, “all American customers whole again.”
And what, if any, is the downside to SBF for making bold claims, regardless of whether they turn out to be true or not?
“We likely could have raised significant funding; potential interest in billions of dollars of funding came in roughly eight minutes after I signed the Chapter 11 docs,” he wrote separately in the letter sent to FTX staff. He has declined to name any of these potential investors.
SBF’s own net worth was once in the tens of billions of dollars. Its blink-of-an-eye incineration was the quickest loss of wealth in recorded history.
“F*** Regulators They Make Everything Worse”
Yet Bankman-Fried can’t help himself from making, “erratic and misleading public statements,” as newly appointed FTX CEO John J. Ray III has stated. Tuesday (Nov. 29) an interview was made public where he admitted to prioritizing Bahamian withdrawals from FTX as he didn’t want to be surrounded by “people angry with me.”
Ray wrote in the bankruptcy filing that, “Mr. Bankman-Fried is not employed by the Debtors and does not speak for them. … Mr. Bankman-Fried, whose connections and financial holdings in the Bahamas remain unclear to me, recently stated to a reporter on Twitter: “F*** regulators they make everything worse” and suggested the next step for him was to “win a jurisdictional battle vs. Delaware.”
During his DealBook appearance, SBF would call regulations “dumb” and “useless.”
Media Darling Then and Now
Despite his failings, SBF certainly knows how to work a room. His every move creates headlines, and if his Twitter account and the complaints of his lawyers are any indication, he seems to relish this ability.
It is unclear what SBF stands to gain from these media engagements. Perhaps it is the only approach he knows, having raised $2 billion from blue chip investors by leveraging the media to his benefit, and one he hopes he can pull off again.
“Thank you for talking to us at a time when you’ve been advised not to,” Sorkin tells SBF at the end of the DealBook interview.
Is SBF delusional? Or will he once again manage to delude the public? Only time will tell.
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