Sam Bankman-Fried rejects rumors that he fled to Argentina
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has dismissed speculation that he has fled to Argentina as the saga surrounding his collapsed cryptocurrency exchange continued to unfold in near real-time on Twitter.
In a text message to Reuters on November 12, Bankman-Fried, who is also leaving SBF, said he was still in the Bahamas. When Reuters asked him specifically if he had flown to Argentina, as the rumors suggest, he replied: “No.”
Users took to Twitter over the weekend to speculate whether SBF was on the run after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for FTX Group, which includes a number of companies such as FTX Trading, FTX US and Alameda Research. The rumors started after users tracked the coordinates of his private jet using the aircraft tracking website ADS-B Exchange. The track indicated that SBF̵[ads1]7;s Gulfstream G450 had landed in Buenos Aires on a direct flight from Nassau, Bahamas early on 12 November.
The rumor is that SBF is on its way to Argentina. pic.twitter.com/Jnxm3bprm9
— CoinMamba (@coinmamba) 12 November 2022
Bankman-Fried lives in a luxury penthouse in Nassau that is reportedly shared by several roommates, including Caroline Ellison, CEO of Alameda Research.
Just landed Sam Bankman-Fried @SBF_FTX Private Jet lands in Buenos Aires Argentina LVKEB in flight #FTX pic.twitter.com/DD4Gy9nuk
— 0xMeTaNeeR (@0xMetaNeeR) 12 November 2022
Once considered the poster child for crypto’s exponential growth, SBF is now at the center of the industry’s biggest scandal. In less than a week, FTX went from one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges with a value of around $32 billion to a bankrupt company with an $8 billion hole in its balance sheet. According to Bloomberg, SBF’s net worth plummeted from $16 billion to zero after FTX’s collapse.
Related: Binance CEO CZ on FTX crash: “We’ve been set back a few years”
FTX raised billions in venture capital in recent years, claiming backers such as Lightspeed Venture Partners, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, Circle Internet Financial, Coinbase Ventures, Multicoin Capital, Paul Tudor Jones and Sequoia Capital.