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According to FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto crash and bankruptcy of FTX really wasn’t his fault. As for being concerned about all of the customers who lost their shirts with this mess? He doesn’t give a damn.
Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has said he ‘didn’t try to commit fraud’ and ‘made a lot of mistakes’ as he was grilled publicly for the first time since his company’s collapse and filing for bankruptcy – and leaving creditors billions out of pocket.
Bankman-Fried, who remains in the Bahamas, was interviewed via video link at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit by journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin in Manhattan on Wednesday night.
In response to allegations that he had run a ‘massive Ponzi scheme, he said: ‘I was CEO of FTX and that means whatever happened I had a duty to our stakeholders … to do right by them.’
‘I didn’t do a good job of that, I made a lot of mistakes,’ he added. ‘I did not try to commit fraud on anyone.’
That entire interview was a train wreck and didn’t do Bankman-Fried any favors. Keep in mind, the person overseeing this bankruptcy has declared it to be even worse than the Enron implosion. There are over 1 million people around the world whom FTX owes money to. Meanwhile Bankman-Fried has some cushy real estate holdings in the Bahamas.
Likely to come is a painstaking autopsy into Bankman-Fried’s management of the company in an attempt to reckon where all this money went. Reuters reported Tuesday that $300 million of the company’s funds went into Bahamian real estate. The roughly $600 million hacked from FTX is already being swapped in and out of different cryptocurrencies, according to Wired. Bromley said there would likely be an investigation into the divestment by Binance, FTX’s chief rival, whose CEO’s public vote of no-confidence was one of the most significant actions leading to the company’s demise.
Sam’s parents benefitted as some of the real estate is theirs. Astoundingly, his mother is a compliance lawyer!
Bankman-Fried’s mother, Barbara Fried, is a tax expert whose scholarship focuses on moral philosophy and “questions of distributive justice.” She has three degrees from Harvard and led a left-wing super PAC that funneled millions of dollars to Democrats. Bankman-Fried’s father, Joseph Bankman, earned an undergraduate degree at Berkeley and a law degree from Yale. According to Fortune, he has helped Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) write tax legislation. He’s also a clinical psychologist who specializes in the “treatment of anxiety, depression, and adjustment in both teens and adults.”
Mom and Pops didn’t teach Sam how to drag a brush through his hair or tie his shoes, but they did school him in the argot of the high-society bullshit artist: “utilitarianism,” “effective altruism,” “commitment to the well-being of all people,” yadda, yadda, yadda.
Throughout that hour-long appearance via Zoom, Sam Bankman-Fried certainly showed he has no interest in taking personal responsibility for the collapse at FTX, the compliance issues, and more.
Sorkin: "Were you truthful with us today?"
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) November 30, 2022
SBF: "I was as truthful as I am knowledgable to be."
Sorkin: "Over time, do you agree that you have lied?"
SBF: "There was times when I was acting a marketer for FTX." pic.twitter.com/FKOC87I8e8
In other words, he did lie. It was someone else’s fault, it always will be. I have to say, he was certainly taught well by his mother. She’s a major democrat donor, runs a PAC called Mind The Gap, and is on record with a 2013 essay that claims taking personal responsibility for any criminal wrongdoing has ruined both the economy and criminal justice system.
"I expect I'm gonna have nothing at the end of this."
— Good Morning America (@GMA) December 1, 2022
Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried sits down with @GStephanopoulos for a one-on-one interview following both companies in his cryptocurrency empire filing for bankruptcy last month. https://t.co/FxYbmQi92Z pic.twitter.com/lMviovTymN
What’s even more infuriating about this is the media fawning all over this criminal conman slob. They are treating SBF like he just had a little bitty boo boo. When, instead, he hosed people out of thousands if not millions of dollars. Not only that, but the media isn’t asking the hard questions as to all the Democrat political donations SBF evidently funned through FTX and his hedge fund, Alameda Research.
Instead we are supposed to excuse the fact that he flat out lied. We are supposed to just accept that the money, billions of it, is gone forever.
Full interview.
— Cold Blooded Shiller (@ColdBloodShill) December 1, 2022
Watch the absolute squirming at 1:37 and 3:55 when pressed on stealing customer deposits.
Shook.pic.twitter.com/pwdfawUkJj
Sadly, for the Democrat Party, with the FTX bankruptcy, they lost one of their best gold mines. Sam Bankman-Fried was one of their biggest donors during the 2022 midterms. Yes, he also donated to Republicans, yet the Democrats benefitted the most from SBF’s largesse. No one is asking about all of that. Why? In my opinion, this is part of the answer.
It is now clear that what happened at the FTX crypto exchange and the hedge fund Alameda Research involved a variety of conscious and intentional fraud intended to steal money from both users and investors. That’s why a recent New York Times interview was widely derided for seeming to frame FTX’s collapse as the result of mismanagement rather than malfeasance. A Wall Street Journal article bemoaned the loss of charitable donations from FTX, arguably propping up Bankman-Fried’s strategic philanthropic pose. Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias, court chronicler of the neoliberal status quo, seemed to whitewash his own entanglements by crediting Bankman-Fried’s money with helping Democrats in the 2020 elections – sidestepping the likelihood that the money was effectively embezzled.
FTX Crypto founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is a con and a criminal. How do you know if he’s lying and doesn’t give a damn about those who lost their money?
When he tap dances through every answer, that’s how.
Feature Photo Credit: SBF at Bitcoin 2021 conference via Wikimedia, cropped and modified
We put our government in charge of our nation’s currency. The Constitution says that Congress has the power to coin money (Article 1, Section 8), not to issue a fiat currency. Our fiat currency only has value because we have to have it to pay our taxes, and these clowns deride bit coin. That government is supposed to hold scoundrels like Sam Bankman-Fried accountable, when he is buying them off. Doesn’t seem likely.
We need to replace the people in charge. The requires us to take more responsibility for the people we nominate to run for public office.
NTSOG says: I suspect Sam Bankman-Fried, aged 30, is very bright ‘clinically’, but youth and the inexperience of youth meant that he was vested with great wealth and power without the organisational ability and knowledge about running a business. As for those who offered him their wealth in the hope he would turn it into the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the technological rainbow, more fools them.
Scott says: I disagree NTSOG.. the line ” The roughly $600 million hacked from FTX is already being swapped in and out of different cryptocurrencies, according to Wired.” says it all. There’s not a doubt in my mind that this was an inside job, and a large percentage of that cash will end up back n his or his families pockets, once the bankruptcy is over.
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