The Collapse of FTX, in Sam’s Own Words

We may not know for weeks whether Sam Bankman-Fried will take the stand at his own trial. He may want the chance to explain himself to the jury, but his lawyers are surely wary of the withering cross-examination such a tactic would invite. No matter: the unconventional former crypto executive has already said – publicly – plenty about what went down in FTX’s final days.

You’re reading The SBF Trial, a CoinDesk newsletter bringing you daily insights from inside the courtroom where Sam Bankman-Fried will try to stay out of prison. Want to receive it directly? Sign up here.

What follows are a series of excerpts from interviews that SBF gave in the month between FTX’s collapse and his arrest in the Bahamas. They provide a picture of the mind of the man prosecutors allege was behind one of the greatest financial frauds in history. According to the man himself, he was a well-meaning altruist whose heady risk-taking got him in over his head.

In early December, a Wall Street Journal interviewer pressed SBF on his knowledge of operations at Alameda, the crypto hedge fund accused of borrowing billions of dollars in crypto from FTX and its unknowing customers. According to SBF, who had a 90% ownership stake in Alameda and lived with its CEO, Caroline Ellison, he, too, didn’t fully know what was going on there, a refrain he later echoed in documents shared with the New York Times.

“FTX was a full-time job,” he told the Journal. “It was more than a full-time job. And I didn’t have enough brain cycles left to understand everything going on at Alameda if I wanted to. I also didn’t want to because I was concerned about conflicts of interest. And I felt like it would be inappropriate for me to be looped into, certainly to details of what was going on there.”

Prosecutors are almost certainly keen on demonstrating the opposite to the jury. Here, testimony from Ellison herself may prove critical in showcasing what SBF knew, and when.

One thing he did seem to know (or at least, claimed) was that FTX’s U.S. operations did not go kaput when its sister exchange, International, fell into the black hole of those Alameda loans.

“I believe that withdrawals could be opened up today, and everyone could be made whole from that and none of these problems plague the U.S. platform,” SBF told…