The worst of the ongoing cryptocurrency rout that sent tokens plummeting and caused the collapse of some firms is over, FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried said in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday.
He said that his exchange still had “a few billion” on hand to further stem turmoil across digital assets and the companies that trade them, which he says is necessary for the good of the market.
SBF’s latest comments come after he’s thrown as much as $250 million at firms like Voyager Digital, which filed for bankruptcy Wednesday, and BlockFi. Bankman-Fried has long maintained that the he would step in to ensure cryptocurrencies, and the broader market, survive the latest downturn that saw bitcoin tumble far from its all-time high of $69,000 to below $20,000 this month.
Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research gave Voyager Digital a $200 million loan in addition to a facility in both bitcoin and stablecoins in light of Voyager’s downfall after hedge fund Three Arrows Capital defaulted on a loan from the company.
And Bankman-Fried is going even further than writing checks. FTX launched FTX Ventures in January, an arm of the exchange with $2 billion under management aimed at bailing out ventures lacking liquidity . His willingness to put up cash has pushed some to label him the “new John Pierpont Morgan.”
SBF added that a growing list of companies have asked for help in recent weeks, while the industry is beyond “other big shoes that have to drop.”
But SBF says that in some cases, he’s using his own money. He said that it wasn’t FTX’s sole responsibility to give stability to the market because the company “has shareholders and we have a duty to do reasonable things by them.”