Sam Bankman-Fried claims FTX was not insolvent but a victim of a mere liquidity crisis, asserting that the exchange had $25 billion in assets and $16 billion in equity at the time of the bank run.
He accuses John J. Ray III and the bankruptcy legal team of ‘decimating’ FTX for their personal gains, charging nearly a billion dollars in fees and liquidating assets at a loss.
Sentenced to 25 years in prison, SBF is now seeking a presidential pardon from Donald Trump, while accusing the Biden administration of orchestrating his arrest.
SBF insists on FTX’s solvency
Sam Bankman-Fried is not backing down. From his cell, the former CEO of FTX claims that the crypto platform should never have gone bankrupt. In a 15-page document dated September 30, he asserts that FTX had $25 billion in assets and $16 billion in equity at the time of the November 2022 crisis, far more than the $8 billion demanded by clients during the bank run.
‘FTX was facing a liquidity crisis, not insolvency,’ the document states. According to him, the situation could have been resolved ‘before the end of the month‘ if external lawyers had not, in his words, ‘taken control of the company‘ to artificially push it towards bankruptcy.
Explosive accusations against the liquidators
SBF now accuses the new CEO John J. Ray III and the legal team of ‘decimating the company‘ for their own financial gain. He points out that these teams billed nearly a billion dollars in fees, while throwing away $7 billion of FTT (FTX’s native token) and liquidating assets at fire-sale prices.
According to his calculations, if these assets had been preserved, their value would now be close to $136 billion, an obviously unverifiable estimate that fuels the anger of former clients still awaiting repayment.
The bankruptcy lawyers, on the other hand, have been claiming for two years that FTX was a real ‘accounting wasteland‘, incapable of reconstructing accounts or internal flows between FTX and Alameda Research. SBF, however, accuses these same teams of ‘deliberately ignoring internal records‘ and undervaluing the company’s assets.
The founder now seeks presidential pardon
Sentenced to 25 years in prison in November 2023 for fraud and conspiracy, SBF is now playing the political card. He and his family claim he was ‘wrongfully convicted‘ and are making appeals for clemency from President Donald Trump, who has already granted high-profile pardons to Ross Ulbricht (Silk Road) and CZ (Binance).
On GETTR, the former crypto golden boy even hinted that his arrest may have been ‘politically motivated‘ by the Biden administration, after he started funding Republican candidates.
The ghost of FTX still lingers over crypto
Three years after FTX’s collapse, the repercussions continue to haunt the ecosystem. The group’s fall caused a $200 billion capital flight in the crypto market and shed light on the gray areas of centralized exchanges.
And while Sam Bankman-Fried clings to his narrative of an FTX ‘set-up victim‘, one thing is certain: the FTX saga remains the most visible scar of the modern crypto market.
