The former CEO of FTX Trading will soon give his first lengthy public interview since the cryptocurrency exchange collapsed in spectacular fashion earlier this month.
Sam Bankman-Fried is scheduled to speak Wednesday evening in Manhattan at this year’s New York Times Dealbook Summit. Bankman-Fried resigned from the company on Nov. 11, the same day FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The 30-year-old is also being investigated in the U.S. and abroad for possible securities violations.
The audience Wednesday will be looking for a more detailed explanation of what caused FTX’s meltdown. Other questions surrounding Bankman-Fried include his activities since the bankruptcy filing and the status of his attempt to raise money to repay FTX customers.
Tthe ex-CEO has been unusually vocal since his company’s meltdown: He told Vox recently that his previous backing of crypto regulations was “just PR” and revealed this week to Axios that his bank account was “down to $100,000.”
The FTX bankruptcy has captivated the crypto and finance worlds. Days after FTX’s bankruptcy filing, court documents revealed the company owed at least $3.1 billion to its top 50 creditors.
“Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here,” new FTX CEO John Ray III — who previously oversaw the bankruptcy of Enron — said in court documents filed earlier this month. Alvarez & Marsal, the accounting firm FTX hired to help it through bankruptcy said the company “historically did not keep reliable books and records.”
Looming over Bankman-Fried’s interview are renewed calls from Washington to regulate the crypto industry. Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio urged U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen this week to develop crypto protection legislation because of what happened with FTX.
“As the bankruptcy filings show, FTX failed to exercise basic corporate controls or risk management over its operations,” Brown, chairman of the Senate banking committee, wrote in a letter to Yellen on Wednesday. “In addition, FTX relied on its own proprietary crypto token, leading to inflated valuations that further fueled irresponsible risk-taking.”
Bankman-Fried has taken a handful of media interviews since FTX’s bankruptcy. He told Vox Media earlier this month on Twitter that his previous displays of support this year of government oversight in the crypto industry was”PR.” and that regulators “make everything worse.”
Icarus-like fall
Where Bankman-Fried stands entering Wednesday’s Dealbook event is a far cry from his former glory as the founder of a crypto powerhouse.
Bankman-Fried was born in California to two Stanford University professors. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a physics degree and later moved to Hong Kong to start Alameda, to start Alameda, which later become FTX’s trading arm.
After his short stint in Hong Kong, Bankman-Fried moved to the Bahamas, where he founded FTX in 2019, just as cryptocurrencies were starting to gain widespread popularity.
After buying a wide array of tokens a few years ago, Bankman-Fried saw his personal wealth balloon. At one point, Bankman-Fried’s personal wealth grew to $26.5 billion, according to Forbes. He beaome a big political donor, including spending $40 million mainly on Democratic candidates and progressive causes, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Widely known as a vegan who loves playing video game League of Legends, Bankman-Fried has loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to struggling crypto companies, earning him the moniker of “crypto savior” before FTX’s collapse.
