Nearly till the second of his arrest within the Bahamas a month in the past, Sam Bankman-Fried’s (SBF) post-FTX collapse media tour included days of back-to-back Twitter Areas and Zoom calls. Now, prime executives of firms in his crypto empire have pleaded guilty to criminal fraud charges of fraud and money laundering and are cooperating with the prosecution, whereas Bankman-Fried — free on a $250 million bond and still giving interviews — pleaded not guilty to eight related prices and has adopted up by launching a publication whereas he awaits trial.
Published this morning on Substack, the “FTX Pre-mortem Overview” message from the previous CEO says, amongst different issues, that “I didn’t steal funds, and I actually didn’t stash billions away.”
Within the prolonged publish (and a few follow-up tweets), he tries to put out a case that FTX and Alameda Analysis “have been each legitimately and independently worthwhile companies in 2021, every making billions.” Given a couple of extra weeks, he asserts, FTX Worldwide might have survived the disaster. The villains on this model of the story embody lead FTX chapter counsel Sullivan & Cromwell (S&C) together with Ryne Miller, the overall counsel of FTX US who joined the corporate in 2021 after a stint with S&C.
Bankman-Fried writes, “S&C and the GC have been the first events strong-arming and threatening me into naming the candidate they themselves selected as CEO of FTX–including for a solvent entity in FTX US–who then filed for Chapter 11 and selected S&C as counsel to the debtor entities.”
SBF finally blames the autumn of his empire on a collection of market crashes that initiated the so-called “crypto winter” final 12 months for dropping the worth of Alameda’s internet property — by his estimation going from $99 billion firstly of 2022 to $10 billion by October.
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Then got here the tweet by Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao that initiated a run of FTX’s FTT token, which he paints as a “focused assault on property held by Alameda, not a broad market transfer.” It’s an attention-grabbing place for him to take, contemplating a report by The New York Times mentioned prosecutors are investigating the likelihood that he and Alameda manipulated buying and selling that set off the crash of TerraUSD and Luna cryptocurrencies earlier this 12 months.
“And so, as Alameda grew to become illiquid, FTX Worldwide did as effectively, as a result of Alameda had a margin place open on FTX; and the run on the financial institution turned that illiquidity into insolvency,” Bankman-Fried writes.
The publish doesn’t deal with the responsible pleas entered by his former mates and enterprise associates, particularly fellow FTX co-founder and former CTO Zixiao “Gary” Wang and former Alameda Analysis CEO Caroline Ellison.
At its launch, the Substack provided followers a chance through a subscription of as much as $150 per 12 months for “founding” members. SBF has since turned that choice off.
