Thank You, Sam Bankman-Fried
Sam Bankman-Fried, the man who singlehandedly crashed a multi-billion dollar cryptocurrency exchange because of his sheer arrogance and incompetence, has been barking like a sick dog of late. I don't mean literally, but he has been talking a lot.
One of the things you are advised to do by your lawyers during a corporate collapse is to say nothing. Anything you say can be used against you in court.
Well, shit for brains, Sam can't stop singing like a canary in a coal mine. His lack of silence and defiance of his legal advice (good legal advice) is a blessing in disguise. We get a front-row seat and running commentary on the demise of FTX.
Towards the middle of his interview at The New York Times Deal Book conference, Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Scam Bankman-Fried, whether his lawyers were pleased he was appearing.
They're very much not. The classic advice, right? Don’t say anything. Recede into a hole. But that’s not who I am. It’s not who I want to be. I have a duty to explain what happened, and I think I have a duty to do everything I can to try and do what’s right if there is anything I can do to try and help customers out there. I don’t see what good is accomplished by me just sitting locked in a room, pretending the outside world doesn’t exist.
It's all part of SBF's attempt to come across as the cool, relatable nerd that used his smarts to start a successful multi-billion-dollar crypto empire. A guy that is famous for playing video games during media appearances.
Bankman is right. 99.99% of people in his situation would listen to the lawyers trying to keep them out of jail and keep their mouths shut. But not Samuel, no. Sam paints himself as some crypto messiah who, through no fault of his own, found himself at the wheel of a corporate ship headed straight for the rocks.
It's interesting to get this level of insight into what will go down as a historic financial collapse. Either SBF is not as smart as he believes, and he is making a huge mistake speaking, or he is trying to dig himself out of his hole. The ironic thing is, the more he speaks, the more the prosecutors have to use against him in court.
The fact Bankman-Fried ignored sensible legal advice speaks volumes about the kind of person he is.
The interview is fascinating to watch. It's even more entertaining than the trainwreck of an interview with Prince Andrew, where he makes wild claims and lies.
I wasn't running Alameda. I didn’t know exactly what's going on. I didn’t know the size of their position. A lot of these are things that I’ve learnt over the last month as I was sort of frantically digging into this.
It's like watching a cat chase a laser pointer.
In the interview, Bankman-Fried claims he didn't know the true extent of Alameda's involvement. The risk FTX was under, and a bunch of other denials. He concedes that he shouldn't have let Alameda's position get so big, but he didn't know until it was too late.
SBF was painted as a trading genius, incredible at math. It's a shame he lacks basic common sense and self-awareness. But we have been gifted an incredible gift at the same time. An insight not usually given into corporate collapses of this magnitude, it's all out in the open, and even if it is a slow-motion trainwreck, I'm captivated.
I will leave you with this final quote from towards the end of the interview, where Sam Bankman-Fried exposes his arrogance to the world:
There's going to be time and a place for me to sort of think about myself and my own future, but I don’t think this is it.
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