The billionaire CEO of FTX has taken to Twitter to issue a string of mea culpas and accept responsibility for the company's downfall, which he hopes to prevent through financing appeals to companies like Kraken. He also announced that Alameda Research's sister trading company would be shutting down.
The company was leaving parent firm FTX and would soon be completely separate from the exchange, according to FTX U.S. Derivatives.
Bankman- Fried said that FTX's near-bankruptcy triggered his chief failures, which he said was his lack of transparency and communication around the company's finances. He pledged to be transparent in a future project, although it was not clear how the disgraced CEO would be in a position to helm such an endeavor in the future.
FTX was facing the possibility of an acquisition by the world's largest crypto exchange, Binance, that fell through earlier this week after Binance's CEO said the company was more or less unsalvageable. More than a billion were wiped out of the markets because of this, leading to a tailspin in the markets.
The total market value of assets and collateral was higher than client deposits, according to Bankman- Fried. Bankman- Fried said it was on me that we ended up there in the first place.
A poor internal labeling of bank related accounts resulted in a lot of a loss of confidence in my sense of users' margin. He said that it was way lower.
Bankman- Fried also acknowledged that he was not a good developer and his explanations on social media should not be misrepresented.
Kraken CEO Jesse Powell, who is evaluating a potential cash infusion to the exchange, said there were red flags in the company's books. The company confirmed this week that the Kraken, with 9,000 of the company's native token on FTX, was not exposed to Alameda Research. The FTX token, FTX, fell to a low of $2.05 this week. Among the red flags mentioned by Powell in a blistering tweet were Bankman- Fried's ego purchase of the American Airlines Arena in Miami, Florida for an eye-watering sum, frequent trips to DC to buy political favor and generally overeager to please D.C. along with his quest for unctuous media coverage. It did not help that he also acted as if he knew everything after showing up to the battle eight years late, Powell pointed out.
Bankman- Fried said he would make sure that all funds will return to the pockets of users if FTX is properly financed. Every penny of that, and of the existing collateral, will go straight to users, unless or until we've done right by them, he underlined on Twitter. After that, investors old and new and employees who fought for what's right for their career and weren't responsible for any of the fuck ups.