Bankman-Fried Says FTX’s Bankruptcy Filing Was a Mistake – Vox

(Reuters) – Sam Bankman-Fred, founder of collapsing cryptocurrency exchange FTX, said he regretted his decision to go bankrupt and criticized regulators in an interview published by Vox.

Bankman-Fried later said on Twitter that the basis of the interview, an exchange of messages on the same platform, was not meant to be made public.

The ailing company, which filed for bankruptcy last week, has named five new independent directors at each of its major subsidiaries, including Alameda Research. The five new directors and newly appointed CEO John J. Ray on navigating through the bankruptcy process.

in the interviewBankman-Fried said that those responsible for FTX’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy process were “trying to burn everything to the ground out of shame,” and that he had two weeks to raise $8 billion and save the company.

“That’s basically all that (fundraising) will matter for the rest of my life,” he said.

His only biggest mistake was “Chapter 11. If I don’t do this, withdrawals will be open in a month with customers in full.”

He added that the regulators are making everything worse. “They don’t protect customers at all,” he said.

In a statement posted to Twitter, Ray said Bankman-Fried has no ongoing role in FTX, FTX US, or Alameda Research and has not spoken for them.

FTX said it is in contact with dozens of global regulators, including the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

After Vox published the interview, Bankman-Fried said that some of what he said was “reckless or overly forceful” and that he was venting about something that wasn’t meant to be made public.

“Really hard to be a regulator. They have an impossible job: to regulate entire industries that are growing faster than their mandate allows,” he wrote on Twitter, adding that the exchange of letters with a Vox reporter “wasn’t meant to be public.”

A Vox spokesperson said that all communications with Vox reporters were recorded unless otherwise agreed by the subject and the reporter.

“Our correspondent is clearly identified as such in her Twitter bio, and he had previously interviewed Mr. Bankman-Fried, in which case, as an added courtesy, she notified him by email that she planned to write about the recorded exchange. He did not object in his reply prior to publication.”

Bankman Fried did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Additional reporting by Shubham Kalia and Jahnavi Nidumulu in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Javier Shekhawat. Edited by Bradley Perrett

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