Sam Bankman-Fried is everywhere on the news nowadays. You will always listen and read about him but rarely from him. However, Tiffany Fong, a prominent journalist, had a chance to interview him. The interview was short but it had all the things that you need to know about Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX, Alameda, and other relevant stuff.
Tiffany Fong tweeted that in an audio interview “SBF talks bankruptcy, the alleged “backdoor,” donations to the Democratic Party, Ukraine money laundering rumors, the hack, Alameda’s margin position on FTX, using FTT as collateral & more.” let’s dig deeper into their talking.
FTX Backdoor
Tiffany Fong’s first question was about FTX’s backdoor diplomacy and asked him if people think that he had a secret door so that he could execute commands and send money to Alameda, etc. without altering records. SBF responded in very harsh words by saying “that I can tell you is definitely not true” additionally, he terms this allegation pure embarrassment for him “I don’t even know how to code is the honest embarrassing answer”
However, he accepted the fact that people used to wire money to Alameda in order to credit money to FTX and he had no intention of doing that by himself.
FTX and FTT
He was asked about the FTT token as collateral, and whether that was a good decision or bad. SBF responded that given the buy and burn mechanism of the FTT token, it was a better choice and decision to take the token as collateral but things did not go as planned. According to him, “the correlation of assets getting dumped and the bank run at the same time was the problem”
FTX and Bankruptcy
When Sam Bankman-Fried was asked about FTX US solvency and Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, SBF immediately responded that it was his mistake to file for bankruptcy. He said that he is aware of his mistake and “You can blame the fucking idiot you’re talking to for actually filing this document, I should have just said no…. it was the right thing to do not to file – I would give anything to unfile that right now”
But things are now out of Sam Bankman-Fried’s hands and he is not even the CEO of the company which is why he is giving such statements openly. He said that “FTX US is 100% solvent” and according to him, FTX was even solvent at that time when it leaked more than $250M to a hack.
However, later on in the interview, he admitted that he has filed for bankruptcy for the sake of employees because if he had not “all the users would be whole and withdrawals would be on FTX right now”
SBF and Donations to Democratic Party
To answer about the donation to Democratic Party during elections, Sam Bankman-Fried said that “I donated about the same amount to both parties this year” however, all the donations that were given to republicans were kept in dark because “media freaks out if you donate to republicans” according to him, SBF was the 2nd or 3rd largest Republican donor, but no one knew that.
FTX and hacking
More than $400M dollars were hacked from the company’s accounts and when SBF was asked about that, he replied that “it was an ex-employee or someone installed malware on an ex-employees computer” that led to such a big hacking to the system.
FTX and the future of FTX
At the end of the interview, Tiffany Fong asked Sam Bankman-Fried about the potential future of the FTX US and FTX to which he confidently replied that “if nothing happens, if I can never do anything again… FTX US will get a dollar on the dollar, FTX will get 25 cents on the dollar”.
