10 of Sam Bankman- Fried’s most outrageous stories

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10 of Sam Bankman- Fried’s most outrageous stories

Sam Bankman- Fried sure isn't going quietly into the night.

With his empire in ruins, a number of federal probes and years of litigation hanging over his head, the founder of FTX has counter-intuitively chosen to meet his critics head on and engage in a full-on media blitz.

He has just this week given an interview to Axios, had long beachside phone chats with cripto-video blogger Tiffany Fong, posted online and appeared on Wednesday by videolink at the New York Times DealBook Summit.

FTX, the Bankman-Fried founded, gave billions of dollars in customer funds to his family office hedge fund, Alameda Research, despite the fact that most CEOs facing similar challenges would stay silent on the advice of their lawyers but not Bankman-Fried, who has tried to spin the narrative in wildly unfiltered ways.

Here are 10 of the craziest things he has said in recent hours and days:

I had a duty, Bankman- Fried said at the DealBook Summit on Wednesday. I didn't do a good job of that. I made a lot of mistakes, and I would give anything to do over again. I saw it as a thriving growing business and was shocked by what happened this month. "I didn't knowingly co-mingle funds," he said at the DealBook Summit. I wasn't trying to co-mingle funds.

Is Alameda trying to raid the FTX piggy bank?

I wasn't running Alameda. He said he didn't know what was going on at the DealBook Summit.

How did FTX customer funds end up being used by Alameda?

It was a messy combination of things a lot of people should have caught and a lot of things I should have been more cautious about, he told vlogger Tiffany Fong.

Sam, the first thing they said was, you have to promise that you will never say that you fucked up again. I told them to go fuck themselves. He told Fong that they didn't think they knew what they were talking about.

Was FTX really his personal fiefdom? There is certainly an extent to which I wish there had been someone who wasn't me who was in charge of managing conflicts of interest, he said in his interview with Axios.

What does he think about talking to reporters?

They are going to be trying to ask me the most provocative possible questions, but it is what it is, but like it is a bit of a perversion on sort of what is going on, he said in his phone call with Fung.

Is there a secret tunnel to move funds from FTX to Alameda?

I don't know how to code. I couldn't build a backdoor into the system. I could barely use the system, he told Fung.

Why did he allow people in the Bahamas to make withdrawals and no one else?

He admitted to Fung that you don't want to be in a country with a lot of angry people in it and you do not want your country to be incorporated in a country with a lot of angry people in it.

Did he give money to Republicans?

All my Republican donations were dark but the reason was not for regulatory reasons, it was that reporters freak the fuck out when you donate to Republicans and I didn't want to deal with that, he told Fung.