FTX Co-Founder Sam Bankman-Fried Denies Stealing Funds, Blames Rival Binance CEO for Platform’s Collapse
Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of FTX, has published a blog post denying allegations that he stole any funds from the now-defunct crypto platform.
In the post, he also lays the blame for FTX’s collapse on rival crypto platform, Binance, and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao.
Bankman-Fried faces a series of charges, including defrauding FTX customers and money laundering, connected to the platform’s dramatic collapse last year that culminated in its bankruptcy filing in November. He has previously admitted to making mistakes but in this latest statement, he shifts the blame to Binance and its CEO, claiming that it was a “targeted attack” on his company.
The post also raises more questions, as it does not address how FTX customer funds ended up in Alameda Research, the hedge fund co-founded by Bankman-Fried, or whether funds were misappropriated in the form of loans used to buy property and make political donations.
FTX’s new CEO, John Ray, has previously expressed little confidence in the veracity of any of the company’s financial statements. However, the company has recently said it has succeeded in recovering around $5 billion in liquid assets.
In his blog post, Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of FTX, detailed the series of events that led to the collapse of the crypto platform. He discussed the growth of FTX and Alameda, the crypto market’s broad decline, and a tweet by Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao that ultimately resulted in the collapse of FTX assets and a rush by customers to withdraw their funds.
He also highlighted that Binance faced its own challenges in the crypto market, including customer withdrawals and a reported Department of Justice investigation. Bankman-Fried referred to Zhao’s actions as a “targeted attack” on Alameda and compared FTX’s collapse to other crypto exchanges that have declared bankruptcy in recent years. Alex Mashinsky, founder of Celsius Network, which also declared bankruptcy, was recently sued by the New York attorney general for allegedly defrauding customers, which Mashinsky denies.
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