The latest message from former FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried left onlookers puzzled and alarmed after the swift decline into bankruptcy for the cryptocurrency exchange he founded.
In successive tweets, Bankman-Fried’s twitter account merely stated, “What,” followed by capital letters H.A.P.P.E.N., unfurled slowly over the span of about 19 hours.
Bankman-Fried has been an active tweeter throughout FTX’s demise, earlier having written that he was “shocked to see things unravel the way they did.”
Twitter and Tesla
TSLA,
CEO Elon Musk, who’s also having some difficulties, tweeted with fire emojis to an attempt at a translation of the cryptic tweet.
Musk also tweeted his amusement at the claim that Bankman-Fried played a “League of Legends” game — the same game the executive infamously was playing when the venture-capital firm Sequoia invested in FTX. Court filings from Musk’s failed attempt to get out of his Twitter purchase show that he doubted that Bankman-Fried ever had $3 billion liquid to co-invest in Twitter.
While the broader social-media sentiment was a wish for Bankman-Fried to be jailed, there also was concern for his health.
FTX has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and over the weekend there also seems to have been a hack of customer funds. The securities regulator in FTX’s headquarters of the Bahamas meanwhile said it had not requested the prioritization for withdrawals of funds for Bahamian clients.
Reuters reported the allegation Bankman-Fried had a “back door” that allowed him to mask the transfer of customer funds to his Alameda hedge fund, which Bankman-Fried told the news agency was just “confusing internal labeling.”
The former FTX CEO couldn’t be reached for comment.