FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is racking up critics after the implosion of his crypto exchange. Industry experts have called him a “fraudster” and some even suggested he go to prison. Here’s what top voices like Elon Musk, Bill Ackman and Binance boss CZ have said, in 8 top quotes. Loading Something is loading.
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Once seen as crypto’s white knight, disgraced former FTX boss Sam Bankman-Fried is now racking up the critics after the shocking collapse of the digital-asset exchange he founded.
FTX’s implosion in November has opened a Pandora’s box of issues at the company. That’s led to serious allegations of fraud highlighted by federal authorities — including questions about how it handled $10 billion of user funds.
Bankman-Fried is being probed over allegations he manipulated the crypto market and mishandled customer funds. He’s also been accused of orchestrating trades to undermine digital token Tether that risked a crypto crash.
Now the crypto CEO is under fire from all sides, from Elon Musk and Bill Ackman to “Shark Tank” investor Mark Cuban. Here’s what 8 influential figures have had to say about the FTX founder.
Elon Musk, CEO of Twitter, Tesla and SpaceX “Let’s just give him an adult timeout in the big house & move on,” Musk said on Twitter, a hint he thinks Bankman-Fried should go to prison.
Mark Cuban, billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks NBA team”I don’t know all the details. But if I were him, I’d be afraid of going to jail for a long time,” the “Shark Tank” investor told TMZ.
Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO”It appears that a massive fraud was committed. I think that customer funds appear to have been moved over to his hedge fund that he owned 90% of, and that those customer funds were lost,” Armstrong said in a podcast interview with Stratechery.
Given that, the crypto exchange boss said he feels like the mainstream media has given Bankman-Fried softball interviews.
“Even this tweet back-and-forth with Maxine Waters, very politely asking him to attend a hearing, and him politely deferring — it was bizarre,” he said.
“This guy just committed a $10 billion fraud, and why is he getting treated with kid gloves?”
Bill Ackman, CEO of hedge fund Pershing Square “The @FTX_Official fiasco is, at a minimum, the most egregious, large-scale case of business gross negligence that I have observed in my career, and that conclusion is reinforced by SBF’s recent public statements,” Ackman said on Twitter.
The billionaire investor added that his earlier tweet appearing to support Bankman-Fried was misinterpreted.
Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, Binance CEO “SBF perpetuated a narrative painting me and other people as the ‘bad guys’. It was critical in maintaining the fantasy that he was a ‘hero’,” said Zhao, who played a big role as FTX imploded and heads up a rival crypto exchange.
“SBF is one of the greatest fraudsters in history, he is also a master manipulator when it comes to media and key opinion leaders,” he tweeted.
“FTX killed themselves (and their users) because they stole billions of dollars of user funds. Period.”
Mike Novogratz, Galaxy Investment Partners CEO”It was delusional. Let’s be really clear. Sam was delusional about what happened and his culpability in it,” Novogratz said.
The crypto bull believes Bankman-Fried will probably end up in jail, but doesn’t think he was acting alone.
“They perpetuated a large fraud and it wasn’t just Sam. You don’t pull this off with one person.”
Anna Sorokin, convicted scammer “It’s a Ponzi scheme, what he did,” Sorokin told Insider.
Sorokin — a Russian fake heiress whose scamming of the New York elite inspired Netflix’s “Inventing Anna” — thinks Bankman-Fried is being insincere in his media apologies.
“If he was a female, he’d either be portrayed as a total con or entirely inadequate and unfit, or both at the same time,” she said. “Now he gets to play this awkward, nonthreatening, seemingly well-meaning earnest fellow who’s trying to make it right by the customers.”
But she accepts the former FTX boss’s account of what happened — that he never intentionally misused funds or defrauded anyone — may be true.
“I don’t know which one is worse — that he actually was not in control, or if he’s trying to cover it up now,” she said. “It’s fucking scary if he was so negligent.”
John J. Ray, FTX’s new CEO”Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here,” Ray said in the crypto exchange’s Chapter 11 filing.
“From compromised systems integrity and faulty regulatory oversight abroad, to the concentration of control in the hands of a very small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and potentially compromised individuals, this situation is unprecedented,” added Ray, who oversaw the Enron bankruptcy earlier in his 40-year career.