When FTX, formerly the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange collapsed into a bloody mess last November, founder and then-chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried wasted no time in organising his press tour.
From minor Twitter Spaces run by small-time finfluencers to exclusive interviews with the New York Times, the disgraced crypto mogul was happy to state his innocence to anyone and everyone willing to give him a platform.
So while we don’t quite know what he’s staying in closed court proceedings today, having made the surprise choice to take the stand as the defendant to accusations of widespread fraud and money laundering that could see him in jail for life, we can hazard a guess.
He made plenty of mistakes, yes.
He mismanaged funds, yes.
He was silly and negligent, yes.
What was he the Bernie Madoff figure weeks worth of testimony from former business partners and lovers is making him out to be? Not a chance!
No doubt that’s what he is probably trying to convince the jury of, considering he has not budged from this line of defence.
“There are things I would do anything to do over again,” Bankman-Fried told the New York Times in December 2022, one month after FTX collapsed, taking $8 billion of customer funds with it. “I was shocked by what happened this month.”
“I didn’t knowingly commingle funds,” he said. “Look, I screwed up… I was CEO of FTX…I had a responsibility.”
We can all agree on the latter point, though testimonies from the likes of Caroline Ellison, former head of Alameda Research (and former lover of Bankman-Fried), where many of these customer funds were wired, painted a more sinister picture.
He knew exactly what he was doing, and is only sad he got caught, reasoned Ellison, as well as other former colleagues Gary Wang and Nishad Singh.
This is what the prosecution will undoubtedly say during cross-examinations in the coming days.