FTX Collapse: Bankman-Fried Could Finish Up in Jail, Says Mark Cuban

For the reason that fall of his crypto empire on November 11, nearly all the pieces has been mentioned about Sam Bankman-Fried.

His crypto bros known as him “felony.” They accused him of mendacity to the purchasers and traders of his firms FTX and Alameda Analysis, a hedge fund that additionally operates as a buying and selling platform.

“They lied. FTX lied. I believe Sam lied to his staff, his customers, his shareholders, regulators all world wide and all of the customers,” Changpeng Zhao, founder and CEO of Binance, mentioned throughout a Twitter occasion on November 14. “So sure, he ought to take many of the blame.”

Binance is the world’s largest crypto change.

Regulators in the US and the Bahamas, the place Bankman-Fried lives and the place FTX was headquartered, have launched investigations. He was questioned by the Bahamian police on November 12, however stays a free man. Congress plans a listening to to query him in December, however no date has but been set.

‘I might Be Afraid’

The Bankman-Fried regime has been closely criticized by the brand new FTX CEO in command of the restructuring John Ray, who mentioned that the previous dealer and his two associates have failed on each degree.

“By no means in my profession have I seen such an entire failure of company controls and such an entire absence of reliable monetary data as occurred right here,” wrote John Ray, in a 30-page doc filed with the US Chapter Court docket within the District of Delaware.

“From compromised programs integrity and defective regulatory oversight overseas, to the focus of management within the arms of a really small group of inexperienced, unsophisticated and doubtlessly compromised people, this case is unprecedented.”

The insolvency of FTX was as a result of a liquidity shortfall when purchasers tried to withdraw funds from the platform. The shortfall seems to have been the results of FTX’s founder reportedly transferring $10 billion of buyer funds from FTX to Alameda Analysis.

Bankman-Fried stays free in the meanwhile. No costs have been introduced in opposition to him, even if FTX’s prime 50 collectors are claiming $3 billion from the change and tens of millions of retail traders might by no means get well their investments.

However for billionaire Mark Cuban, Bankman-Fried ought to find yourself in jail. That is what he has simply acknowledged to TMZ. He claimed that jail is imminent for the previous king of cryptocurrencies.

“I do not know all the small print, but when I had been him, I might be afraid of going to jail for a very long time,” the Dallas Maverick proprietor mentioned. “I talked to the man and thought he was good.”

“I had no thought he was going to take different folks’s cash and put it to his private use.”

Private Loans

Bankman-Fried acquired a private mortgage of $1 billion from Alameda, in line with Ray. The agency additionally gave a $543 million private mortgage to Nishad Singh, the FTX Director of Engineering, and $55 million to Ryan Salame, the co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, one in every of FTX’s associates.

“I perceive that there doesn’t look like documentation for sure of those transactions as loans, and that sure actual property was recorded within the private title of those staff and advisors on the data of the Bahamas,” the liquidator mentioned.

He additional wrote that, to be reimbursed for enterprise bills, staff solely needed to submit the request by chat and a supervisor would instantly approve with a customized emoji.

As a crypto change, FTX executed orders for his or her purchasers, taking their money and shopping for cryptocurrencies on their behalf. FTX acted as a custodian, holding the purchasers’ crypto currencies. 

FTX then used its purchasers’ crypto property, via its sister firm’s Alameda Analysis buying and selling arm, to generate money via borrowing or market making. The money FTX borrowed was used to bail out different crypto establishments in the summertime of 2022.

On the identical time, FTX was utilizing the cryptocurrency it was issuing, FTT, as collateral on its steadiness sheet. This represented a big publicity, because of the focus threat and the volatility of FTT.