NEW YORK, NY — After a series of ill-advised interviews, former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried gave an interview at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit on Wednesday in its first in-person appearance since The collapse of the cryptocurrency company.
Appearing mostly from the Bahamas, where he’s sitting in a darkened room next to a single factory, a sullen Bankman-Fried seeks to salvage his already decimated reputation, asserting that he never “never tried to scam anyone”. Interview conducted by time CNBC reporter and host Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Bankman-Fried dismissed one of the central—and most legally dangerous—criticisms of his work at the crypto exchange: That he used client assets fraudulently underwriting another of his businesses, cryptocurrency trading firm Alameda Research.
“I didn’t mean to mix the money,” he said. He claimed the company’s sudden demise was due to poor management and his stubbornness in handing over supervision to other parties. He also stated that he did not run Alameda when leading FTX, even as he acknowledged that he maintained an ownership stake and exposure to its internal processes.
“I made a lot of mistakes,” he said, softly as both the US and Bahamian authorities were investigating the collapse of the company.
At one point, Sorkin asked if Bankman-Fried’s attorneys were in full agreement with his form of statement. “They very much don’t,” he said.
The audience members, who had spent the day buzzing about whether Bankman-Fried would actually show up, eagerly pulled out their phones for a quick snap of the besieged crypto mogul. Every row of seats in the Lincoln Center boardroom saw attendees cross their arms in disbelief as he spoke.
Bankman-Fried has struggled to contain the fallout recently. A former strategist, he exchanged a series of direct messages with a Vox reporter earlier this month in which he admit that his philanthropic reputation was at least in part a bogus public relations play. He later stated that he did not know the messages would be made public and that he spoke to the reporter, Kelsey Piper, as a friend. (Piper denies that the two have maintained a friendship.)
Bankman-Fried has also abandoned his previous image as a major Democratic donor, revealing that he, in fact, has also contributed heavily to Republican activism — secret though.
“Reporters will freak out if you donate to a Republican because they’re all secretly libertarian,” he said in an interview. release this week. “I didn’t want that war, so I blacked out all the Republicans,” he added, referring to untraceable “dark money” political donations. intact.
