Sam Bankman-Fried desires for people to understand his regret. In his first network interview, the former CEO of the massive cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which filed for bankruptcy protection in November, told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that he felt guilty about not having done more to stop FTX’s demise. “Bankman-Fried stated, “I really, deeply wish that I had taken a lot more responsibility for understanding what the details of what was going were. I should have been in control of this, and I feel awfully bad and guilty about it now. Many persons suffered injuries. That’s my fault.”
Bankman-Fried acknowledged that many people would see him negatively, particularly the investors who lost billions of dollars as a result of FTX’s failure. Many people picture Bernie Madoff when they see you, Stephanopoulos remarked. Bankman-Fried replied, “I don’t think that’s who I am at all. “However, I can see their point of view. Cash was lost by people. Money was lost by several people.
But Bankman-Fried said that he might also be a victim. He once had a net worth of $20 billion, but that has since been lost. He admitted to ABC that his only assets as of right now are an ATM card and a bank account holding roughly $100,000. He declared, “I anticipate having nothing at the end of this.”
The interview, which was conducted in the Bahamas, where FTX had its headquarters, aired on ABC’s Good Morning America on Thursday. Before it all came apart, Bankman-Fried addressed claims that FTX staff members were hard partying and using illegal drugs, claiming he had never seen either. He also denied ever drinking at work.
After a competitor cryptocurrency exchange said it was abandoning its acquisition of FTX due to rumours that Bankman-business Fried’s used deposits to pay creditors, FTX unexpectedly failed. The former CEO said that his business had “clear procedures” in place to permit lending and borrowing on the platform, but claimed that there was insufficient control.
“I didn’t have someone in place to manage that risk, that position, or that account,” he admitted. “I didn’t have enough supervision, “and it caused FTX to crash.
“There is something there that may potentially be gravely incorrect, and I wasn’t even trying. I was plainly making a mistake when I wasn’t investing any time or effort in trying to control risk on FTX, he stated. “I don’t think that would have happened if I had been thinking about risk management on FTX for an hour a day,” the author says. And that makes me feel bad.
Bankman-Fried was questioned by Stephanopoulos on two tweets the former CEO made just days before FTX applied for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, one of which said, “FTX is OK. Assets are good, and FTX has enough to cover all customer holdings, according to another. Even in Treasury securities, we never invest client money. Later, both were removed.
The tweets were true, according to Bankman-Fried, who asserted, but “not long after that tweet I started to get very concerned that FTX might not be fine.”
It’s uncertain how effective the interview will be at persuading people that Bankman-Fried was not the swindler they think he was. The former CEO claimed once that the success and subsequent failure of his business had a negative impact on his social life and made it “pretty difficult to have real, close friendships” because “it was really hard for me to find opportunities to talk to people as peers where they would be comfortable and relaxed around me, where no one had anything to prove,” according to the former CEO.
I had incredibly few genuine pals, he admitted.
Bankman-Fried stated that he is currently concentrating on “making it up to everyone who was wounded.” he Added, “In the end, I have no control over what transpires. And the world will assess me accordingly.”
