FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who filed for bankruptcy protection in the US court, appeared in public for the first time since bankruptcy on the 30th (local time), admitting he made many mistakes in FTX management, but denied allegations of fraud. .
According to Bloomberg News, Bankman-Fried appeared in a video interview at an event hosted by the New York Times that day, claiming that he did not personally feel criminally responsible, saying, "I made a lot of mistakes, but I didn't cheat anyone."
Journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin, who interviewed Bankman-Freed that day, introduced that he attended the event in the Bahamas.
Bloomberg reported that Bankman-Fried's public remarks that day could lead to legal problems in the course of future investigations.
He has been sued by customers and others over the bankruptcy, and is also under investigation by regulators.
When asked why FTX had a liquidity shortage of $8 billion, about 10.4 trillion won in our money, and whether it mishandled customer assets, he emphasized that he "did not deliberately mix" customer assets and FTX funds. .
FTX's liquidity crisis was allegedly caused by its $10 billion FTX customer deposits supporting its affiliate, Alameda Research.
“FTX and Alameda were much more closely linked than we intended,” Bankman-Fried said.
He claimed that he was very concerned about the conflict of interest (between the two companies), saying that he did not run Alameda Research himself.
Meanwhile, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who spoke at the same event on the same day, referred to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008 and evaluated the FTX crisis as “the Lehman crisis that occurred within the virtual currency market” and emphasized the need for regulation of the virtual currency industry.
(Photo = Facebook capture, Yonhap News)