Sam Bankman-Fried Sobs, Blames Others for FTX Collapse in Prepared Testimony

Disgraced former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried whined about the loss of his net worth and blamed others for the collapse of FTX in prepared testimony Tuesday to the House Financial Services Committee.

Bankman-Fried wrote:

I fucked up. I know that it doesn’t mean much to say that I’m sorry. And so I’m dedicating as much of myself as I can to doing right by customers. When all is said and done, I’ll judge myself primarily by one metric: whether I have eventually been able to make customers whole. If I fail our customers in this regard, I have failed myself.

Now that he apologized, Bankman-Fried proceeded to lament the loss of his billions of dollars, which is reportedly built on fraud and other financial crimes, and whined he and other senior members of FTX cannot still access personal information as many people have lost unknown amounts of money on FTX:

Last year, my net worth was valued at $20b.

Today, I would be wrong to say that I have nothing: I have a loving family, and food on my plate,
and that’s more than life has given billions of people.

But last I saw, I believe my bank account had about $100k in it. I don’t know for sure, because I
have been denied access to many of my own personal passwords, data, documents, and
accounts.

As of today, I and many other members of FTX International’s former management team are
missing access to key data–data that could help inform customers, inform the Chapter 11 team’s
decisions, and inform foreign regulators looking after FTX International. Nearly all of this data is
held by the Chapter 11 team.

The former FTX CEO then complained current FTX CEO John Ray, who is managing the bankruptcy of FTX, for not working with him.

He wrote, “I have sent five emails to Mr. Ray. Mr. Ray has never responded, nor has he reached out to me to communicate in any other ways.”

Bankman-Fried also took issue with the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell and other executives for pushing the company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, which he believes was a mistake.

He then complained the company had sustained “a month of sustained negative PR on FTX largely driven by Binance,” a rival digital currency exchange. He also said a “run on the bank” was “triggered” by Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao. Zhao said Binance would sell large holdings of the FTT token, a cryptocurrency token largely held by FTX.

After blaming Binance as one of the main catalysts for the collapse of FTX, Bankman-Fried said, “There is much more to say about Binance, its role in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, and its relationship with FTX, but this is neither the place nor the time for it.”

Ray, in contrast, blamed the collapse of FTX principally on “grossly inexperienced and unsophisticated individuals who failed to implement any controls.