Bankruptcies, John Jay Ray III has seen a parade. The experienced American liquidator was at the forefront of the iconic fall of energy giant Enron twenty years ago. Catapulted to the “FTX” file, the latter nevertheless declared: “I have never seen such a failure. the loss of tens of billions of dollars to the four corners of the planet. John Jay Ray III also mentioned, at FTX, the absence of accounting, of basic financial information, of a simple list of employees. In short, a real fiasco. In the place of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, targeted by accusations of fraud, many would be tempted to make themselves small, very small. Not him.
The one nicknamed “SBF” is now multiplying his outings: tweets, conferences, interviews, spaces (voice discussion spaces on Twitter)… Last Thursday, he was thus the guest of an event organized by the New York Times. “I have never tried to cheat on anything. I was excited about the prospects of FTX a month ago. I saw it as a successful and growing business. I was shocked by what happened this month”, he expresses with a strange distance. The next day, with George Stephanopoulos, presenter of the ABC channel, SBF carried out his self-criticism: “If I had only devoted an hour a day to risk management within FTX, I would not don’t think any of this would have happened.”
Asked about the massive losses, Bankman-Fried lines up behind the only regulated activity of his empire – his activities in the United States via FTX US – to play down. “When I submitted my file [de faillite], I was pretty sure that FTX US was creditworthy and all US customers could get their money back. I don’t know why US withdrawals have been disabled,” he tweeted on Sunday. Finally, repeatedly questioned about the use of FTX client assets by Alameda Research – a trading company he even founded and which precipitated his fall – he says this time that he does not know what happened there, or quite simply that he did not act “knowingly”.
“A master manipulator”
Bloombergwho surrendered in his sublime penthouse of the Bahamas, says Sam Bankman-Fried’s strategy is simple: “To lay the blame for his company’s failure on a confusing combination of poor accounting, misjudged risks and complete ignorance of what his hedge fund was doing .” But is SBF only credible as a naive spectator of the disaster? Facing New York Times, Sam Bankman-Fried uses the phrase “I don’t know” 17 times. His memory falters on many technical issues, also notes the FinancialTimes. Austin Carr, columnist at Bloomberg, ponders these painful attempts at defense: “Is it a coincidence that Bankman-Fried suddenly became so unskilled at translating cryptographic concepts for the masses?” The young man with curly hair had indeed become an expert in popularizing cryptocurrencies and their exchanges. According to several experts interviewed by L’Express in recent weeks, FTX has also built its entire reputation on powerful trading tools accessible to all. In the United States, general public advertising campaigns, in which American football player Tom Brady or comedian Larry David appeared, extolled the merits of his platform for the general public. Today, its own founder struggles to explain its mysteries.
The reasons for this media offensive, strongly discouraged by his lawyers, are in fact elsewhere. In the British economic daily, he assures in a moment of lucidity that a silence, in the current context, would be perceived as “a tacit admission of the veracity of a large number of theories” written on the Internet about him. Those that make him the new Bernard Madoff of cryptos, or the Jordan Belfort, it depends. In short, a crook. A vision notably fueled by his enemies. Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, current crypto strongman, said on Twitter on Tuesday: “SBF is one of the biggest fraudsters in history, he is also a master manipulator when it comes to media and key opinion leaders.” A bit of ego, then, and a good dose of nerve. “The press helped create his image as an honest man in crypto, so why not use that to get out of trouble? note Bloomberg, aware of the deception, including at his expense. Because for the time being, Sam Bankman-Fried refuses any other invitation, for example that of the committee of the House of Representatives of the United States, which will meet on his case on December 13.