FTX former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried says he wants to start a new business
Rekt Tech partner Robert Mowry joins ‘Cavuto: Coast to Coast’ to discuss his conversation with FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried and the investigation into the collapse of FTX.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced former head of failed crypto exchange FTX, said this week that he hopes to start a new business to recoup investors’ losses in the firm’s collapse.
The 30-year-old told the BBC in an interview published on Saturday that he would “give anything” to start a new venture.
FILE: Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder and CEO of FTX, in Hong Kong, China, Tuesday, May 11, 2021. (Photographer: Lam Yik/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
“I’m going to think about how we can help the world, and if the users haven’t gotten much back, I’m going to think about what I can do for them,” he said. “And I think at least I have a duty to FTX users to do right by them as best I can.”
Asked if she was prepared for the possibility of arrest, Bankman-Fried said: “There is some time at night ruminating, yes, but when I get up during the day, I try to focus, be as productive as possible and ignore things that are beyond my control.”
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FTX failed last month in what was essentially a cryptocurrency version of a bank run, as clients tried to withdraw their assets all at once amid growing doubts about the financial strength of the company and its associated trading arm, Alameda Research.
Since the collapse, FTX’s new management has called the cryptocurrency exchange’s management a “complete failure of corporate controls.”
FILE: Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and former CEO of FTX Cryptocurrency Derivatives Exchange, speaks during an interview on an episode of Bloomberg Wealth with David Rubenstein in New York, U.S., Wednesday, Aug. 17, 2022. (Photographer: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Bankman-Fried has said he takes responsibility for the collapse and that he failed to understand how much risk Bermuda-based FTX and Alameda were taking across both businesses.
One of the charges against Bankman-Fried is that he arranged for Alameda to use customers’ assets in FTX to place bets in the market. Bankman-Fried has said in public interviews that he did not “knowingly” commingle clients’ assets with Alameda.
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Bankman-Fried said in a tweet Friday that he is willing to testify before Congress next week, but that he will be limited in what he can say and that he “will not be as helpful” as he would like to be.
Bankman-Fried is currently in the Bahamas.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
