Disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried unleashed a tirade against regulators, called “ethics” a “dumb game we woke Westerners play,” and insisted his biggest mistake was filing for bankruptcy in a wild, wide-ranging interview.
Sam Bankman-FriedCEO of FTX
“I f—ed up. Big. Multiple times.”
Sam Bankman-FriedCEO of FTX
“You know what was maybe my biggest single f—up? The one thing everyone told me to do. Chapter 11.”
Sam Bankman-FriedCEO of FTX
“Instead I filed, and the people in charge of [the company] are trying to burn it all to the ground out of shame.”
Bankman-Fried — who is believed to be hiding out in the Bahamas — blamed “messy accounting” for how his hedge fund, Alameda Research, had borrowed money from FTX’s balance sheet for investments.
Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried admitted that his advocacy for better crypto regulation in Washington was “just PR” — and bluntly dismissed official bodies supposed to protect customers against crooked companies.
Sam Bankman-FriedCEO of FTX
“F–k regulators. They make everything worse. They don’t protect customers at all.”
Bankman-Fried admitted the interview conducted was genuine, but claimed he thought it was an exchange with a friend and not one that would be posted online.
Bankman-Fried added his own clarifications after the interview was published — attempting to walk back his crude assessment of regulators.
Sam Bankman-FriedCEO of FTX
“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. [Some had] deeply impressed me with their knowledge and thoughtfulness. Some of what I said was thoughtless or overly strong — I was venting and not intending that to be public.”
This time, he blamed being “overconfident and careless” after being “on the cover of every magazine, and FTX was the darling of Silicon Valley.”Now, he said, his “goal — my one goal — is to do right by customers.”
Sam Bankman-FriedCEO of FTX
“I’m contributing what I can to doing so. I’m meeting in-person with regulators and working with the teams to do what we can for customers. And after that, investors. But first, customers.”
Sam Bankman-FriedCEO of FTX
“It sucks. I’m really sorry that things ended up as they did. And as I said — I’m going to do everything I can to make it more right.”
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