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Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) said he wished he was on top of things.
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SBF added that many people are hurt, and he is responsible for that.
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SBF also blamed the market conditions for how things turned out.
SBF admits he failed in various aspects
Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of the now-bankrupt FTX crypto exchange, told ABC News in a recent interview that he failed in various aspects. He admitted that a lot of people are hurt, and that is on him.
He stated that he is ultimately responsible for the downfall of FTX and Alameda Research. However, SBF denied that he knew that there was any improper use of customer funds. He said
“I really, deeply wish that I had taken a lot more responsibility for understanding what the details were of what was going on. I should have been on top of this, and I feel really, really bad and regretful that I wasn’t. A lot of people got hurt. And that’s on me.”
FTX filed for bankruptcy last month after Binance backed out of acquiring the cryptocurrency exchange. The filing came after reports emerged that FTX used deposits to pay Alameda Research creditors.
However, SBF said he was not aware that the reports were true but added that Alameda had a large position open on FTX that was “overcollateralised a year ago.” The former FTX boss also partially blamed the bear market that threatened that position quite a bit and also mismanagement on the part of the company.
He said;
“I failed to have someone in place who was managing that risk, who was managing that position, managing that account. I failed to have proper oversight.”
FTX did not invest with the customer’s funds, says SBF
The bankruptcy filing revealed that SBF loaned himself $1 billion from Alameda Research. When asked about it, he stated that the $1 billion loan he made to himself was generally for reinvesting in the company and not for consumption. He added that;
“There is something maybe even deeply wrong there, which was I wasn’t even trying. Like, I wasn’t spending any time or effort trying to manage risk on FTX, and that was obviously a mistake. If I had been spending an hour a day thinking about risk management on FTX, I don’t think that would have happened. And I don’t feel good about that.”
SBF continues to claim that FTX did not invest their customer’s funds. He told ABC News that;
“But I would phrase it differently. I think if I were to say that today I would say, ‘look, FTX itself doesn’t invest client assets, but there are margin positions open, and we don’t know what all of the clients are doing with their business outside of FTX.’ Which means that we have a duty to manage the positions that are open on FTX to the extent that we don’t have full recourse or insight into investments that are made off of it.”
This latest development comes a few days after SBF claimed that FTX’s hacker might be a former employee.