Sam Bankman-Fried clam to have ‘misaccounted’ $8B in FTX money

Sam Bankman-Fried is the man of FTX and was the company’s founder and CEO.

The net worth of Sam Bankman-Fried was estimated to be close to $16 billion the previous month.

Disgraced The founder of the doomed cryptocurrency platform, Sam Bankman-Fried, who is also a graduate of the prestigious university, offered a peculiar explanation for a $8 billion budget shortfall that helped force the platform to file for bankruptcy a month ago.

He claimed that he had simply “misaccounted” the cash.

During an interview with Bloomberg that took place from his opulent penthouse in the Bahamas, Bankman-Fried was frantically trying to explain what had occurred at FTX.

During the course of the interview, the destitute crypto bro produced a spreadsheet that detailed the incorrect math that he had used while contacting possible investors for a potential last-second bailout of FTX and its sister trading firm Alameda Research.

Bankman-Fried lists $8.9 billion in debts versus roughly $28 billion in assets; of the assets, $9 billion were ostensibly “liquid.” The section is titled “What I *thought*.”

In a different section with actual figures, it was shown that FTX had $8 billion fewer in liquid assets than what Bankman-Fried had projected they would have.

The hypocrisy is infuriating. While Ross languishes in a prison cell, Sam Bankman Fried is enjoying his life in the Bahamas and will be speaking at a conference in NYC this Friday.

Correct this injustice. #FreeRoss pic.twitter.com/HnzfsAPKq3

— Martha Bueno (@BuenoForMiami) November 29, 2022

According to Bankman-comments Fried’s to Bloomberg, “It appears naively to me like, you know, there’s still some major liabilities out there, but like, we should be able to handle it.”

The reporter for moneyvests then brought out the $8 billion disparity between the two figures.

The reporter questioned, saying, “You misplaced $8 billion?.”

Bankman-Fried, who graduated from MIT with a Bachelor of Science degree in physics but also minored in mathematics there, responded with “Misaccounted.”

The extent to which FTX and Alameda’s financial matters were intertwined was brought to light in the study shortly prior to the company’s filing for bankruptcy protection.

According to a report that was published by Reuters a month ago, Bankman-Fried had secretly transferred $10 billion in customer assets from FTX to back up dangerous wagers made by Alameda Research.

From the opulent condominium where he, his ex-lover Caroline Ellison, and a small group of housemates controlled FTX and Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried delivered his most recent defense of FTX’s implosion. Ellison had been Alameda’s CEO up until the company went bankrupt.

Bankman-Fried continued by asserting that clients sometimes wire their money to Alameda rather than FTX. In addition to this, he argued that the FTX system had double-counted that money, which might account for the discrepancy between the two sets of figures.

The disgraced executive could not provide a comprehensive explanation as to what occurred to the $8 billion in assets that were not included on the basic balance sheet.

During the course of the conversation, Bankman-Fried admitted at one point that “I was really lazy with this mental math.”

Bloomberg also put pressure on Bankman-Fried to provide a response to the criticism that he was placing the blame for FTX’s bankruptcy on Ellison and other subordinates.

In response, I asked him what he thought the worst mistake was, and he said, “I think the biggest mistake was that it wasn’t totally clear whose fault it was.”

The ineffective accounting techniques that were implemented at FTX by Bankman-Fried and his associates have been harshly criticized by the company’s new leadership in a file with the bankruptcy court.

Accounting procedures and corporate governance standards at FTX were described by the company’s newly appointed CEO, John Ray III, as being the worst he has ever seen.

Ray III previously served as CEO of Enron, which he led through its bankruptcy. In addition to this, he criticized the extravagant spending of Bankman-Fried and others, including the expenditure of $300 million on high-end real estate and the use of emojis to approve expense requests.

Fact Check