Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried knew his company was heading for trouble on Nov. 6, when he realized its trading arm had too many assets tied up in the platform. On Wednesday, he summed it up in his first public interview, saying, 'I've had a bad month.'
The audience sat quietly as Bankman-Fried, speaking via video from his home in the Bahamas, stumbled through the causes of FTX's meltdown. The onetime crypto wunderkind said Alameda was humming along this year until the crypto market crash tanked the value of the assets it held. Ultimately, the financial health of Alameda was too closely tied to FTX and Bankman-Fried didn't realize that until it was too late, he claimed.
"I wasn't running Alameda and I didn't know exactly what was going on," he said."I didn't know the size of their position. A lot of these are things I've learned over the last month as I was frantically digging into this on November 6, November 7, November 8. Obviously, that's a pretty big oversight that I wasn't more aware."
Late at night on November 6, he said,"I start to become nervous that FTX is not going to be able to fulfill customer withdrawals." In that moment, it dawned on him that"things might end quite badly here," he recounted.Even today, Bankman-Fried maintains that the FTX's U.S. division has enough cash on hand for customer withdrawals. But even if that were true, American customers cannot access their funds.
Bankman-Fried shrugged off questions about whether there was a larger scheme to defraud customers and investors."I've had a bad month," he said.The ex-CEO has been unusually vocal since his company's meltdown. Bankman-Fried said Wednesday that his lawyers would rather he stay quiet, but"that's not who I am and not who I want to be."
"I think I have a duty to talk to people," he said."I have a duty to explain what happened and I think I have a duty to do whatever I can to try and do what's right, if there is anything I can do and try and help customers out here. I don't see what good is accomplished by me just sitting locked in a room pretending the outside world doesn't exist."
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