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Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) has surfaced to engage in his first public interview from behind bars. Currently serving a 25-year sentence, SBF's fall from grace stemmed from one of the most egregious fraud cases in not only the crypto industry but the entire financial world.
In an interview with The New York Sun, SBF offered his two cents on FTX, US politics, and the current state of crypto, but his attempt to humanise himself has fallen on deaf ears.
Already tainted as a sociopath, sympathy for SBF was not going to come easy for a man who singlehandedly wiped out billions from the market, including $8 billion in customer deposits, $2 billion in FTT value, and $14.5 billion from his own net worth.
Nonetheless, SBF's 45-minute interview spread over three days, offered an opportunity for the crypto villain to present himself as a leopard who changed his spots. Instead, SBF squandered the opportunity by flipping on his political stance in an attempt at a pardon plea, attempting to pass off FTX's collapse as a common "liquidity" crisis, and insisting upon his "innocence."
Famously a Democrat supporter as the second-largest donator to Joe Biden's presidential campaign, SBF took aim at Biden and his administration while claiming he was a Republican supporter since 2022.
“A lot of my time was spent on crypto policy and I, you know, became really frustrated and disappointed with what I saw of, you know, the Biden administration and Democratic party,” he said.
“The Biden administration was just incredibly destructive and difficult to work with and frankly the Republican party was far more reasonable.”
He went on to criticise US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over the FTX trial, as a common enemy, shared with President Donald Trump. “I know President Trump had a lot of frustrations with Judge Kaplan. I certainly did as well,” he said.
Additionally, Danielle Sassoon, an assistant US attorney for the Southern District of New York, who served as the federal prosecutor who led the case against SBF, resigned last week after defying a Trump DOJ order to drop a corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
His fawning remarks about Trump come as his parents seek a pardon from the President for their criminal son, perhaps inspired by Trump's recent pardoning of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht.
Blockhead
SBF went on to claim that "FTX never went bankrupt" and that it was a "liquidity crisis, not a solvency issue." He claimed that the firm had "enough assets at the time to pay back all customer funds but due to the takeover by law firms and their handling of the situation, the process became extremely slow and even misled the public."
"Customers could have gotten their funds back in November 2022. But the bankruptcy trustee took two years to acknowledge that there were enough funds," he explained.
"They initially claimed there were only $1 billion in assets, but it has now been found that there are $15 billion in assets. This is a complete management failure."
If SBF's attempts to wash his hands of responsibility weren't clear enough, when asked whether he believes he is innocent, SBF replied, "I do, absolutely." Admitting he would "do things differently," SBF said he "backed down from a fight in 2022."
We weren't convinced then and we're not convinced now.
