That’s according to Vox, which published an article late Wednesday (Nov. 16) based on an exchange of direct messages on Twitter between FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and writer Kelsey Piper.
Hours later, Bankman-Fried — in a 32-part Twitter thread — said his messages were not intended to be public, characterizing his conversation with Piper as talking “to a friend of mine.”
FTX filed for bankruptcy last week in the midst of a scandal that has rocked the cryptocurrency world and has the company facing what could be more than 1 million creditors and a host of regulatory investigations involving dozens of agencies around the world.
The fallout has even extended to celebrities who appeared in FTX’s commercials earlier this year: Tom Brady, Gisele Bündchen, Stephen Curry, Larry David and other celebrity endorsers — along with Bankman-Fried himself — were named in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Miami this week.
The proposed class action suit accuses the defendants of promoting unregistered securities and violating Florida’s Securities and Investor Protection Act and the Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.
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As for the bankruptcy, Bankman-Fried told Vox the people handling it were “trying to burn it all to the ground out of shame,” and that he had two weeks to come up with $8 billion and save FTX.
“That (raising the money) is basically all that matters for the rest of my life,” he said.
His largest mistake? “Chapter 11. If I hadn’t done that, withdrawals would be opening up in a month with customers fully whole.”
Bankman-Fried also cursed regulators, saying they “make everything worse. They don’t protect customers at all.”
As PYMNTS noted Wednesday, Bankman-Fried has been engaged in a reputation wash of late, spending the past weekend calling potential investors, while also speaking with The New York Times in a widely-criticized interview.
“For example, a scan of the Times’ story covering the FTX implosion and SBF’s involvement contained not one mention of ‘fraud,’ ‘crime,’ ‘criminal,’ ‘illiquid,’ ‘hidden’ or ‘back door’ — all relevant terms when discussing the exchange’s total failure — although it did reveal that SBF is still ‘getting sleep,'” PYMNTS wrote.
