The former CEO of FTX Sam Bankman-Fried has expressed deep regret over filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week, calling it his “biggest single fuckup.”
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In a wide-ranging interview with VOX which was published on Nov. 16, Bankman-Fried reportedly answered questions on a number of topics such as the Nov. 11 Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, his thoughts on regulators, ethics, how FTX and Alameda “gambled with customer money,” and the FTX hack.
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According to screenshots of the Twitter conversation between VOX reporter Kelsey Piper and Sam Bankman-Fried, the former FTX CEO said that although he has made multiple mistakes, the biggest one was listening to what people told him to do and filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
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“I fucked up big multiple times,” Bankman-Fried wrote. “you know what was maybe my biggest single fuckup?”
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“The one thing *everyone* told me to do [...] chapter 11.”
Bankman-Fried said that if he hadn’t filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, “everything would be ~70% fixed right now,” and “withdrawals would be opening up in a month with customers fully whole,” adding:
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“But instead I filed, and the people in charge of it are trying to burn it all to the ground out of shame”
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After admitting to a “liquidity crunch” on Nov. 8, Bankman-Fried had reportedly sought $8 billion from investors in emergency funding to cover a shortfall, even offering his personal wealth to “make customers and investors whole.”
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When asked what was next for him, Bankman-Fried suggested he still had two weeks to get the $8 billion, which is “basically all that matters for the rest of my life.”
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However, in a Nov. 16 statement, FTX CEO and chief restructuring officer John Ray has reminded the public that Bankman-Fried "has no ongoing role at [FTX], FTX US, or Alameda Research Ltd. and does not speak on their behalf.”
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Turning to other topics discussed during the interview, Bankman-Fried said that his push for regulations was “just PR,” before adding:
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“Fuck regulators, they make everything worse, they don’t protect customers at all”
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Hours later, Bankman-Fried appeared to have walked those sentiments back, noting in a Nov. 16 tweet that:
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"It's really hard to be a regulator. They have an impossible job: to regulate entire industries that grow faster than their mandate allows them to."
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Bankman-Fried also confirmed that the money being removed out of FTX was indeed a hack, suggesting it was either an “ex-employee, or malware on an ex-employee’s computer.”
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The former CEO has once again stood behind his claim in a deleted tweet that FTX has never invested clients assets, suggesting it “was factually accurate” as Alameda was the company which was investing the funds.
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Cointelegraph has reached out to Sam Bankman-Fried for additional commentary but has not received a response by the time of publication.
