Sam Bankman-Fried says he regrets filing for bankruptcy: Report
Former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has expressed deep regret for filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week, calling it his “biggest fuckup.”
In a wide-ranging interview with VOX published Nov. 16, Bankman-Fried reportedly answered questions on a variety 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.
According to screenshots of the Twitter conversation between VOX reporter Kelsey Piper and Sam Bankman-Fried, the former FTX executive said that while he’s made several mistakes, the biggest one was listening to what people told him to do and filing for Chapter 11- bankrupt.
“I’ve fucked myself big several times,” Bankman-Fried wrote. “You know what was maybe my biggest shit?”
“The one thing *everyone* asked 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,” with “withdrawals would open within a month with customers completely whole,” adding:
“But instead I applied and those in charge are trying to burn it all to the ground in shame.”
After admitting to a “liquidity crisis” on Nov. 8, Bankman-Fried reportedly sought $8 billion from investors in emergency funding to cover a shortfall, even offering his personal fortune to “make clients and investors whole.”
Asked what was next for him, Bankman-Fried suggested he still had two weeks to get the $8 billion, which is “basically everything that matters for the rest of my life.”
However, in a Nov. 16 statement, FTX CEO and restructuring chief John Ray reminded the public that Bankman-Fried “has no ongoing role at [FTX]FTX US or Alameda Research Ltd. and does not speak for them.”
Related: FTX’s new CEO John Ray coldly addresses SBF’s erratic tweets
As for other topics discussed during the interview, Bankman-Fried said his push for regulations was “just PR”, before adding:
“Damn regulators, they make everything worse, they don’t protect customers at all”
Hours later, Bankman-Fried appeared to have gone back on those sentiments, noting in a Nov. 16 tweet that:
“It’s really hard to be a regulator. They have an impossible job: to regulate entire industries that are growing faster than the mandate allows them.”
27) Some thoughts:
a) It is *really* hard to be a regulator. They have an impossible job: to regulate entire industries that are growing faster than their mandate allows.
And so often they end up largely unable to police as well as they would ideally.
— SBF (@SBF_FTX) 16 November 2022
Bankman-Fried also confirmed that the money removed from FTX was indeed a hack, suggesting that it was either an “ex-employee or malware on a former employee’s computer.”
The former CEO has once again stood by his claim in a since-deleted tweet that FTX never invested clients’ assets, suggesting it “was factually accurate” as Alameda was the company that invested the funds.
Cointelegraph has reached out to Sam Bankman-Fried for further comment, but has not received a response by the time of publication.
