(indistinct group chatter) He had become a celebrity.
There's no question. One of the richest people on the planet and certainly one of the youngest
rich people on the planet. He was on the cover of Fortune this year, being compared to Warren Buffet. 30-year-old billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, better known as SBF, saw a meteoric rise as
crypto's golden boy. The more time I spent with Sam, the smarter I felt that he was. My goal is to be able to
donate almost everything that I make. A seemingly al
truistic billionaire looking to have a big impact. I don't give a (beep) a about my legacy, like I care about the impact that I have. He struck me as somebody that was really trying to
do something transformative. Which is why the crypto
scandal that engulfed him shocked the world. News overnight. Sam Bankman-Fried is now
in custody in the Bahamas. His $32 billion cryptocurrency exchange. FTX goes bankrupt in a matter of days. $8.9 billion in customer
funds are missing. I thought he was the Mark
Zuckerberg of crypto. Is he now the Bernie Madoff of crypto? Top Minds on Wall Street, Silicon Valley venture capitalists, A-list celebrities and
millions of crypto traders flocked to FTX trusting
Bankman-Fried with their money. I lost over $2 million on the FTX platform when it went down. Now FTX customers who lost millions are sharing their stories. It's really, really sad. Really sad not only how it's affected me, but how it's affected
millions of people globally. Investors who gave FTX
tens
of millions in capital are speaking out. So you feel betrayed. Oh, 1,000%. I'm betrayed and disappointed. And the former president of FTX US who resigned less than two months before its collapse tells all. What Sam did was
old-fashioned financial fraud. So far all anyone has from
Bankman-Fried is an apology. I'm deeply sorry about what happened. And customers want answers. I had never lost that much money that amount of time before. This was probably one of the most scariest times like ever. I
am definitely pissed at
SBF. This was an entrepreneur who could have done really great things. How did it all go so spectacularly wrong? I'm not gonna revise history.
I liked him, and trusted him. How could so many have been fooled? With an entity like FTX, there were clearly glaring red flags beyond any that I'd ever seen before. And will his customers
ever get their money back? I'm in a quite a big hole right now. I am probably gonna have
to file for bankruptcy. (bright music) A stones throw f
rom the turquoise water and pristine beaches in the Bahamas, Sam Bankman-Fried sets up
FTX headquarters in Nassau. What was the actual headquarters like? I think they had three or four, what effectively looked
like suburban office buildings that they were conjoining. It looked like a very large trading floor not too dissimilar to what
you would see on Wall Street. In less than two years, this little office park in the Bahamas becomes home to one of the
largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the wor
ld built by traders for traders. The platform worked. It was probably the
best platform out there in terms of user experience. More than 5 million users flocked to the exchange according to FTX and they were trading big money. You know, we have 10, $15 billion of daily trading volume on the platform. From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, Some of the smartest
money becomes desperate to get in on the action. And he was a industry leader and a first mover in
cryptocurrency exchanges. Had a big vision
for the future and he was minting money. Investments in FTX pour in
totaling nearly $2 billion. I think their impression was Sam was the ideal tech founder who had landed on a goldmine. He had this way of making everyone really want him to succeed. He was this person who
was incredibly smart. He was ambitious. He was well pedigreed. He had gone to MIT, his parents were Stanford
University professors. He had worked at Jane Street, an organization that everybody
on Wall Street respects. And so th
at combination of things is a pretty interesting thing. For retail trader Sunil Kavuri, who's worked in traditional
finance at Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan hearing
about these investments gave FTX major street cred. They raised yes,
significant amount of funds, about $900 million from Sequoia, Paradigm. I thought, okay, this is a
very safe institutionally backed exchange. Kavuri moves millions to the
exchange. Crypto enthusiast, Evan Luthra does the same. A 100%, I was aware about all the VCs th
at invested in FTX and that is also building out of trust. Seemingly out of nowhere, Bankman-Fried and FTX start
becoming the biggest names in crypto. This is a tale as old
as time to some degree. Some young charismatic
guy in Bermuda shorts with the floppy hair, got
charmed the 20 best investors in the world. The young billionaire crypto
titan's overnight success featured in magazines and on TV. Thanks for having me. In the otherwise secretive world of crypto where the owners of exchanges
are c
amera shy, Bankman-Fried, stands out welcoming the publicity. I would say definitely
played a little bit of role that we knew who was actually behind FTX. I think what what really
gave him credibility was the exponential profits he
was making for the investors and the the billions of dollars he was throwing around
like monopoly money. The co-founder of FTX is spending millions promoting the exchange with high profile
celebrity endorsement deals to bring in more and more customers. It became an o
bsession. More sports teams, more
sports celebrities, different kinds of properties
that we could put our name on. NFL Superstar Tom Brady
becomes an investor and is featured in FTX commercials. FTX is the safest and easiest
way to buy and sell crypto. Comedian Larry David
stars in a Super Bowl ad that cost millions. FTX, it's a safe and easy
way to get into crypto. Eh? I don't think so. The marketing works. For FTX, the first time I heard about it was on the Super Bowl ads. I was like, oh my go
odness, there's all these big
name people utilizing FTX. All the A-list names associated with FTX gives customers the impression there's been ample due
diligence done on the exchange. Did the celebrities make
me feel more comfortable about using FTX? Personally, it did. But in reality everyone involved is gambling on the success of FTX and placing their trust in its founder. Remember when you're talking
about a venture capitalist, you're talking about a
risk taker with capital, you're going to g
o one for 10, you're gonna go one for 15 and in that one you may find the Google or the Facebook and so Sam was one of those
one for 15 or one for 20. But customers placing
their faith in the exchange have much more to lose. The money was meant to be
used for buying a house. I don't have that anymore. I own this condo. I've
owned it for six years. I don't want to just have to part with it. And in November of 2022, the entire operation
unravels in just a few days. (dramatic music) The implosion o
f FTX begins
in the suburbs of Chicago. Nick Baker, the
editor-in-chief at CoinDesk, a crypto news website, is working from home
when one of his reporters reaches out with a story. Ian Allison, our reporter,
started hearing Alameda, This trading firm owned
by Sam Bankman-Fried, may not be on the most
solid financial footing. Ian heard this from a source. As a journalist you hear
a tip and that's great, but the challenge is, well
then how do you prove that. They confirmed the tip with a leaked co
py of Alameda's balance sheet. What the document showed was
that in a very powerful way, that there was a very strong
financial entanglement between these two companies. Their article goes live on November 2nd, exposing for the first
time that nearly half of the $14.6 billion in
assets on the balance sheet of Bankman-Fried's
secretive crypto hedge fund were listed as FTT tokens, digital currency Bankman-Fried
and his co-founders created for FTX customers back in 2019. That's a red flag potential
ly because it tells you that
so much of this empire is supported on a foundation of money that comes from a sibling company. To better understand why that revelation leads to the collapse of FTX, you need some background on FTT. The FTT token is basically the
token for the platform FTX. The benefits you get from the FTT token is you get reduction in trading fees. I invested about $200,000
in the FTT token. SBF would regularly show
that he was personally buying FTT token so I held it. When FTT fi
rst hits the
market in July of 2019, a token costs around two bucks. By 2021, it skyrocketed to nearly $80. And in November of 2022,
it's trading around $22. The idea was to give people almost like an equity-like stake in ftx.com. If you were someone outside the US. But Harrison and FTX customers say they didn't know the FTT token was not widely distributed, which is key to having the
market determine its price. A substantial portion of all
the FTT tokens in existence, were sitting on the
balanc
e sheet of Alameda. According to the criminal complaint, SBF engineered the price
of FTT by directing Alameda to buy large amounts of the
token to maintain its price and that creates a huge problem. Alameda could not have sold
its billions of dollars of FTT tokens without crashing its price. Their presence there, there's so such a substantial
presence on that balance sheet was a suggestion that perhaps
this is a house of cards. To make matters worse, Alameda began using it as
collateral to obtai
n billions of dollars in loans from
third party lenders, leaving Alameda exposed to
significant financial risks according to the complaint. And by the summer of
2022, several of Alameda's major lenders go bankrupt. After a $2 trillion crash
in the crypto markets. It was probably an
opportunity for Sam to say, "Wow, I just got smoked
out alongside of Terra Luna and Celsius and Three Arrows. I'm shutting down Alameda and I'm going to focus
all my energy on FTX." I think if he had done that, I don'
t think we'd be in this situation. Instead, at the direction
of Bankman-Fried, Alameda greatly increased its
usage of FTX customer funds to meet its external debt obligations. According to the CFTC. FTX customers are completely in the dark about what's happening with their money. Their first indication there
could be problems at FTX happens on November 6th, four days after the CoinDesk article
reveals the billions of dollars worth of FTT tokens on
Alameda's balance sheet. One of FTX's biggest
in
vestors gets spooked. The CEO of Binance, the world's largest
cryptocurrency exchange, who goes by his initials CZ, makes an announcement in a tweet to his 7 million followers saying, we have decided to
liquidate any remaining FTT on our books. And recently with the news
of them becoming insolvent carried by CoinDesk first we just said, "Well, we wanna sell those tokens." That's all we did. The single tweet from CZ is enough to make some customers panic. A lot of market participants
were getting
spooked and were withdrawing the money. We're seeing a run on the bank start. And that was leading to $4 billion a day of client withdrawals. At that point, we started
calling prospective, sources of financing
because I was nervous. But publicly Bankman-Fried
is telling customers a different story. On November 7th, he tweets a competitor is trying to go after
us with false rumors. FTX is fine, assets are fine. SBF came on Twitter and then he said, "A competitor is attacking us. We do not take c
lient deposits and we don't invest them in
anything, even treasuries." So I think that put my
mind at rest that okay, this is just fear on the
part of market participants. Sunil Kavuri, Jake Thacker and Evan Luthra keep their crypto on FTX. I did not think this was actually a cause of concern 'cause
I had all that faith and trust in the system and
already built it up over time. But the very next day,
Bankman-Fried deletes that tweet. According to the SEC, the price of FTT drops more than 75% and
it's now apparent that
Sam's Empire is crumbling and investors like Anthony
Scaramucci are concerned. I went to The Bahamas
on November the eighth. I flew down there. Sam seemed sort of
disassociated like the scene in "Private Ryan" where you
know the battle's happening and somebody loses his arm and they're actually holding their own arm in their hands. He was having a hard time processing that all of this was happening to him as quickly as it was happening. I left the Bahamas saying, "Okay, t
here's a huge problem here." In a last ditch effort
to save the company, Bankman-Fried makes a
surprising move calling the CEO of Binance with an offer to sell them FTX. But the deal never gets off the ground. Patrick Hillman, Binance's chief strategy
officer at the time, got a firsthand look at FTX's finances as part of its due diligence team. It was like a bomb went off in that place. We're getting on calls,
people are crying even though, we were within the first like 12 hours of this crisis f
or them. So it was complete pandemonium over there. What did Binance end up finding in the due diligence process? We weren't able to do due
diligence for that long. You asked for specific
information figures. The most basic like figure is how much cash do you have on reserves and what are your liabilities, right? How much do you owe versus
what you have today? And we couldn't make heads or tails of it. The potential deal with Binance falls apart in less than 48 hours. I'm thinking to myself,
Bin
ance pulled out, this is something very serious. When CZ and Binance basically said, "We're not doing the deal." That's when I was like, uhoh, now I gotta do whatever I can
do to get whatever I got left. This was probably one of the
most scariest times like ever. And for many customers, it's too late to withdraw their funds. I requested all withdrawals
of all my assets, but none of them completed. None of the withdrawals ever came through. You're just helpless. Like, what do I do? I was just in
so much shock
that that could happen. I had a huge amount of money obviously on the exchange and I thought, okay, there's something wrong. Why would he stop withdrawals? 'Cause the exchange is if
everyone takes the money out, all that's what should be
left is the exchange assets. I thought this seriously
wrong. I felt really sick. It's clear FTX and Alameda cannot survive. And on the morning of
November 9th, around 10:00 AM at an all hands meeting, Caroline Ellison, the CEO of Alameda tells
staf
f earlier that year in response to an accounting
or bookkeeping problem, Bankman-Fried and other
individuals decided to use FTX customer funds for Alameda. According to the CFTC's complaint, FTX and Alameda file for
bankruptcy two days later. It's basically bloody November. (upbeat music) Bankman-Fried spends the
next month in the Bahamas inside the $30 million
ocean front penthouse where he lived with other
FTX and Alameda executives. It's one of more than
30 properties purchased by the FTX gro
up according
to the bankruptcy team. Many people actually just sort of worked from this place where Sam lived and spent only sort of
sporadic time in the office. It was sort of like a dorm, it was like a college campus that they had created for themselves. I traveled to The Bahamas
shortly after the collapse to ask Bankman-Fried how this happened. My first stop, FTX headquarters. Do you know if anyone
from FTX is in there? No one is here. No one's there? Just three months before
the collapse of
FTX I interviewed Bankman-Fried
at the company's headquarters. At the time, he was a
frequent guest on CNBC. Sam, it's great to have you back. The founder and CEO of FTX. Being featured on the cover of magazines and making headlines for bailing out other struggling crypto companies. When I asked about the
surprising resilience of his businesses during
a major crypto crash, his answer seemed plausible. How did you and your
company's FTX and Alameda survive that crash? I mean, I think like,
and fi
rst of all, FTX, just like our corporate treasury in cash. I mean, our business office incredibly like related to the crypto markets, but we kept cash on hand
and it's not meant to be something that has direct market exposure. I also asked Bankman-Fried
to explain the ties between his two companies. What about the relationship
between FTX and Alameda? I think there's some questions on kind of where those lines are. Are there any potential
conflicts of interest in running as many companies
as you
do in the same space? Yeah, I've put a lot of
work over the last few years into trying to eliminate
conflicts of interest there. And one big piece of this is just like, I don't run Alameda anymore.
I don't work for it. None of FTX does separate SaaS and the way that we
view FTX is as a neutral piece of market infrastructure. During the two hour interview, he talked about giving
money away to charity. My goal is to, put myself in a position where I'll be able to donate
almost everything that I m
ake. And appeared to be an
idealistic young billionaire. If you spend $300 million buying a yacht, like that's thousands of lives that you probably could have
saved in Sub-Saharan Africa. Like most reporters at that time, I took Bankman-Fried at his word. FTX and Alameda were private companies that didn't have to
disclose their financials in the same way a publicly
traded company would. But that interview didn't age well. And a few months later, I found myself back at FTX headquarters this time
covering the
story of how the guy who made billions over five years lost it all in a matter of days. I'm here to give Sam a chance
to set the record straight. FTX's headquarters here in Nassau Bahamas is looking a lot different than when we were here
just a few months ago. There was a massive FTX
sign out here that's gone. The parking lot is
essentially empty right now. And Sam Bankman-Fried, who
was pretty camera friendly, has become pretty camera shy. I pushed for an interview
and after lots o
f texts back and forth, okay, well
we just heard from Sam. Bankman-Fried invites me to meet with him behind these walls and
security cameras at Albany, but declines to go on camera. I shared part of our conversation on CNBC despite being ousted from FTX
in the company's bankruptcy, he says he's still spending most of his time still
trying to broker a bailout. A few weeks later in an
interview with CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin for the
New York Times Deal Book, Bankman-Fried admits he would've
done t
hings differently. I've made a lot of mistakes or things I would give anything
to be able to do over again. I didn't ever try to
commit fraud on anyone. But FTX customers who
watched aren't buying it. I have no respect for
the person at this point, like zero and anything
that that person says is invalidated in my opinion. I think that's just and media narrative like he's trying to
frame the media narrative to benefit him. So that part really pisses me off. I could see literally I
knew that he wa
s lying. He thought he could spin this story. Less than two weeks later. As the sun sets in NASA on December 12th, the Royal Bahamas police arrive at Albany. Police pull the former billionaire from the comfort of his penthouse and lock him up in this Bahamian prison. It's a hellish week for
the former crypto titan who follows a strict vegan diet. He reportedly survived on peanut butter and stale wonder bread. But for those impacted the
most Bankman-Fried's arrest still doesn't feel like justice.
SBF going to prison doesn't help me. I'm not getting up and
popping bottles of champagne in the morning and have
a mimosas with my dog over SBF getting arrested
right then and there. I still feel battered and bruised and completely demoralized. Billions of dollars are still not back in FTX customer's hands and
they want Bankman-Fried to pay. I think he should spend the
rest of his life in jail. Literally, 100% is
probably an easy way out relative to the suffering he has caused a lot of other vi
ctims. Extradited to New York in handcuffs. Bankman-Fried is now facing
a dozen federal charges in Manhattan court related to the collapse of FTX and Alameda. From 2019 until earlier this year, Bankman-Fried and his co-conspirators stole billions of dollars
from FTX customers. In some ways it's very, very straightforward what's being alleged, which is that Sam Bankman-Fried
took digital assets or other forms of assets from FTX, moved them over to Alameda where he could have more control over the
m and use that money as his
own private piggy bank. John Ray, the former chief
restructuring officer for the Enron scandal
appointed as FTX's new CEO is at the helm of a massive team tasked with following the money. This is really old
fashioned and embezzlement. This is just taking money from customers and using it for your own purpose. What Ray discovered after his first look at
the books is shocking. There's no record keeping whatsoever. It's in the absence of record keeping. Employees would c
ommunicate,
invoicing and expenses on Slack. They use QuickBooks, multi-billion dollar
company using QuickBooks. There's no independent board, right? We had one person really controlling this. How did so many people miss? What on the surface appears to
be so many obvious red flags? What did due diligence look
like on the investor side? You went through a standard
checklist of due diligence, questionnaire, background
checks, data room accounting, financial analysis, audited accounting. He had eve
rything. I mean, you don't dupe 25 of the world's most sophisticated venture capitalists if you're not going
through the list, you know. So he had all the paperwork
that any high profile experienced investor would really look to. Yes, he did. There was no smoke in any
quarter of the business. Brett Harrison was
running the US side of FTX from Chicago. What was your sense of the
financial health of FTX when you left? I had no reason to suspect
that FTX wasn't anything other than extremely
profita
ble and in great shape. Sam was embarking on fundraising. Again, he had said both on some internal, all hands and externally that ftx.com had 2 billion in excess capital for as a result of its raises and FTX US has six or $700 million and
they were in amazing shape. You think FTX is gonna, eat the world because it's so profitable. So some of the top
employees at the time of FTX really didn't have a sense of
the actual financial health of the company. I can only speak for the
people on the US sid
e. We had absolutely no clue. How is that possible? Well, look, imagine
yourself in our position like you are in a high ranking position, but you're not the CEO,
do you think, okay, Sam has made all this
public and private reporting about the financial of the company. I should really get all
of the bank statements. I should get access to all of those and I should rummage through them and see if I agree with the accounting. Sam testified in front of Congress, he's getting public accolades
from th
e top investment firm. Should I also distrust
everything he's saying in those two forums? I think anyone in our position would be hard pressed to think, okay, this is the time where I'm supposed to
suspect something is wrong at the company. Whether or not you can understand how some of the red flags go unnoticed, it is clear that many feel duped. Their explanation for how
they think Bankman-Fried could have pulled this off. Good financial services organizations have lots of checks and balances a
round because there will always
be a person of conscience that will protect the organization from a group of fraudsters. And so he had a very
close knit group of people that he was working with. I would have to think that
his closest inner circle of the people in the Bahamas, that at least to other
founders had to know. (dramatic music)
(siren wailing) On the evening of December 21st, a convoy of SUVs transporting
Sam Bankman-Fried arrives at a private jet hanger in Nassau. And as soon as the
pr
ivate jet is in the air flying Bankman-Fried to New
York to face criminal charges, the Department of Justice holds an unexpected press conference. The Southern District of New York has filed charges
against Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research, and Gary Wang, a co-founder of FTX. Both Ms. Ellison and Mr. Wang have pled guilty to those charges and they're both cooperating. Gary Wang, the 29-year-old mysterious co-founder of FTX
flipped on Bankman-Fried. In court testimony, Wang
sa
id I was directed to and agreed to make certain
changes to the platform's code. I executed those changes, which I knew would give Alameda Research special privileges on the FTX platform. The coding guru testifies, he knew what he was doing was illegal. Gary was someone who was very difficult to get to talk at FTX when I would go and occasionally try to
visit the office in Bahamas. Gary was someone who
never spoke to anyone. He would show up at 5:00
PM and leave at 4:00 AM. 27-year-old Nishad Sin
gh,
FTX's, director of engineering also pleads guilty to fraud charges. Brett Harrison says he raised
concerns about Gary and Nishad in a letter to Bankman-Fried
just before he left the company. Gary Wang, the CTO of
both FTX and FTX rise and Nishad Singh, the director of engineering
of both FTX and FTX US had written 90 plus
percent of all the code for the exchanges. And they did very little, I thought to really
disseminate the knowledge such that if either one of them suddenly, ended up in the
hospital and
couldn't come to work anymore, I think the exchange would've been done. It would've been over
because all of the knowledge was in those two guys' heads. Caroline Ellison, the 28-year-old
CEO of Alameda Research also shares what she
knows telling the court: I understood that FTX would
need to use customer funds to finance its loans to Alameda
and that most FTX customers did not expect that FTX would lend out their digital asset holdings
and fiat currency deposits. We don't really do
any technical analysis. In this bizarre interview
with the El Momento podcast, less than six months
before Alameda's meltdown, Ellison makes some surprising admissions about running the crypto hedge fund. We use very little math, use a lot of like elementary school math. We tend not to have
things like stop losses. Later Ryan Salame, the former
head of FTX digital markets, pled guilty to two criminal counts related to the FTX case. Guilty pleas from SBFs top lieutenants gives investigators valu
able information for their case against him. And one expert says all that
intel from the criminal case could also help the bankruptcy team track down customers and
investors missing money. If there's a fraud and there are a number
of agencies involved in doing investigations, then you're gonna spend a lot
of time with the attorneys and have your attorneys
really sort of staying in getting close to those investigations. Greg Rayburn is the chief
restructuring officer who presided over the WorldCo
m scandal, the largest bankruptcy
in the US at the time. When we stepped into WorldCom, we didn't know how deep the fraud was, but we knew what we had in
terms of a group of assets. We understood what the business was. We didn't have to go and
do a lot of guesswork. With FTX, you don't know what you have. And figuring out where the
assets are could take years. I think FTX is gonna be probably one of the longer cases just because of the sheer
amount of litigation that's gonna be required. So far,
John Ray and his team have recovered $7.3 billion in assets. The recovery process benefiting from a rise in crypto prices. The recoveries, the bankruptcy court is gonna provide priorities
in terms of who gets paid what out of whatever the recoveries are. When it comes to chapter 11 bankruptcy, especially when it comes to
exchanges and things like that, the chances of you getting even some or most of your money back is very low. For now, only FTX customers in Japan have been able to withdraw
any
of their funds due to strict crypto
regulations in the country. The company says its Japanese customers have been able to
withdraw 6.6 billion yen, which is nearly $50 million. For other customers it
could take much longer to get any of their money back. I knew in one second that
as soon as the bankruptcy was finalized and declared that I'm not getting
access to any of this money for the next few years. I've resigned to the fact that I will not get all of it back. It will be a miracle, I think
if all of the money is found wherever it may be hidden or not hidden. And while the bankruptcy
process is ongoing, the value of those assets
in a volatile crypto market could go up or down. I'm generally an optimist, so I hopefully we can see some money back. But Sunil Kavuri is hedging his bets, joining a lawsuit with
some other FTX customers suing FTX's celebrity endorsers in an effort to recover
some of their losses. Adam Moskowitz is his attorney. Sam knew who to go after. He was gonna go af
ter the
people that most people would respect. So he went
after Tom Brady, Larry David, Steph Curry, Shaquille O'Neal. We're seeing each of the
celebrities got paid millions and millions of dollars to voice this opinion that it was quote, a safe investment and they
need to be liable for that. Attorneys for the celebrities named in the lawsuit declined
our request for comment. While the bankruptcy process
and other legal cases attempting to recover
money from the FTX fiasco wind their way through
the courts. Some customers who need cash now are turning to other options. Multiple companies or individuals can actually go ahead and put in a bid for your bankruptcy claim. (dramatic music) The biggest question on the minds of more than a million
customers and investors who lost billions on FTX, will they ever get any of their money back and how much of it. On FTX I had almost 60% of my portfolio of crypto portfolio based on
all the other bankruptcies and everything that happened
in the crypt
o market, I was really, really worried
about getting anything back and then how long I would have to wait. I started looking at
other ones like Mt. Gox and they took almost
like eight to 10 years before the people even
got a portion of it back. So Bhagamshi Kannegundla goes online to see if he has any options to recover at least some of his money more quickly. I started looking into
how can I get something for these bankruptcy claims. He found a company that
would help him sell his bankruptcy cl
aim
for a small percentage of its value for cash. Here's how it worked. The bankruptcy claim was for $174,000. The buyer was after all the
due diligence and everything, it went down to like 11% of the 174,000, and I think that came out to
almost around 19,000 or so. So I got a certain percentage back. I guess the best way to say it is it's 11 cents for the dollar. Years later. If the bankruptcy process
recovers more than 11 cents on the dollar for that claim, then the buyer of Kannegundla's clai
m pockets the difference and turns a profit. Let's say in like the
174,000 that I lost in FTX gets recovered in 10 years, right? I will have zero regrets. Zero regrets because Kannegundla
has a different strategy. I wanted to get the cash
from the bankruptcy claim primarily to invest in crypto again, I felt like as if there was a good chance for me to make money in
the next five to 10 years. So mine is always a long-term perspective. For other FTX customers,
it's a waiting game. And as time goes
on, the highly specialized investigators working around the clock
on the FTX bankruptcy are billing by the hour. What's interesting about this bankruptcy is you do have an incredible
window in vivid detail as to every penny that
every consultant is earning from the $1,300 an hour
that John Ray is charging to the average $1,800 an hour
that Sullivan and Cromwell is filing is charging. Seven months into the FTX bankruptcy case. The retained professionals
already have requested more than $200 mill
ion in fees according to a court appointed
fee examiner's report. That's nearly $1.5 million a day, the report says the fees are remarkable, but so is the professional's performance. The firm's named in the examiner's report declined our request for comment. What's really concerning is that, all the lawyers have to
be paid in the bankruptcy before we get paid out. Because the number of
professionals involved and the hours they work changes over time, it's impossible to calculate
how much the ban
kruptcy fees will ultimately cost FTX customers. The real winners in all of
this will be the attorneys who worked on the bankruptcy. They're not just the real winners. They're gonna be the only winners. So far, none of the customers we spoke to have received any
of their money back from FTX and you may be surprised to hear that this whole experience has not shaken their faith in crypto. I think cryptocurrencies
generally should be here to stay. I think that, and it hasn't shaken my faith in the
underlying asset itself. I do want everybody to understand that the mistake here was not Bitcoin. The mistake here was not crypto. The mistake was one bad actor, SBF who's really the one who's
to blame for all of this, and the fundamental
reason why we buy Bitcoin, why we use Bitcoin has not changed. I would encourage people
to still invest in crypto. Would I encourage them
the way I had before? No, I probably would give
them some different advice at this point and say, "Hey, you know, here's wh
at I learned. Don't make the state mistakes I did." Sam Bankman-Fried has
been willing to admit he's made some mistakes as well. I've made a lot of mistakes or are things I would give anything to be able to do over again. I didn't ever try to
commit fraud on anyone. Though Bankman-Fried's
version of the story is difficult for FTX customers to believe. Were you truthful with us today? I was as truthful as I as you know, I'm knowledgeable to
be, there's some things I wish I knew more about, but ye
s, I was. Truthful or not the question
of whether Bankman-Fried, broke the law is now up
to the courts to decide. Bankman-Fried's pled not
guilty to all charges. I don't see how all of the evidence that's now been sort of
laid out there in the open against him could be
construed any other way than him having committed
financial crimes. We asked those impacted the
most by the collapse of FTX. If they have a message for Bankman-Fried. I don't have anything to
say to Sam. Not at all. I'm disappoint
ed in the betrayal of trust. I'm disappointed in the
lack of understanding for the need for integrity. I don't know if it would
get through to him, but I believe the worst thing he has done is the suffering he has caused to millions of victims worldwide. I would tell Sam, I mean,
it's great that at least, you're saying in the media
that you wanna make sure all the customers are alright, I guess do the right thing then. I mean, serve your time,
pay your penalties, and do the best you can for your
users. My biggest advice to him is
figure out what you can do to help all those people who
lost their life savings in FTX. I don't know how you're gonna
do it or what you're gonna do, get it done. If I had a chance to
confront Sam face to face, I would just honestly
be curious to know like what he was actually trying to do? Like, were you trying to do good or were you just really bad person and promoted yourself really well in order to swindle a bunch of people, like just gimme an honest answer
Comments
He didn't even have an accountant yet all the finance magazines featured him. Gross negligence on their part.
The guy with the chain, Versace shirt and BAPE pants is personification of crypto bro
Wasn't Alex Becker a private investor for Project Blcktken300 . It's been killing it lately. Do you think it's still got room to move.
My Blcktken300 shorts are doing pretty well and I plan to hold much longer.
its not a complex story, he broke contract language, stole depositor money, gambled it on alt-coin, spending untold millions on celebrity marketing and lobbyist influence peddling, all while skimming off the top for himself and his family... exactly zero about this is revelatory or unique when it comes to fraud and scams, he lied to customers and stole their money.
SBF looks so shifty in interviews. He had all the signs of a liar.
What side are you on as Blcktken300 divides the wealthy from the poor?
In my opinion Blcktken300 has great Potential to Pump due to all the ai craze...
CNBC had a direct hand in propping this guy up and putting it in his head that he's a god. Funny how they only get critical about him and FTX now that's it's 6 months after the collapse.
Let's discuss the Blcktken300 guys. This is failproof and barely any asset can be labelled failproof at all.
Treasury rates are rising quickly, the markets are collapsing, inflation is skyrocketing, and the Fed is imposing a significant interest rate hike—all of which will result in further losses for portfolios this quarter. How can I take advantage of the present market volatility? I'm still undecided about whether to sell my $125,000 worth of bonds and stocks.
I cannot believe how few people are being charged over FTX .
Remember when they called him a “Genius” or humanity’s “Savior”?
to many scams here , what's the best bitcoin way to invest your bitcoins and gain Good returns
As a newbie about to invest, you must have these three things in mind 1. Have a long term mindset. 2. Be willing to take risk. 3. Be careful on money usage, if you're not spending to earn back, then stop spending. 4. Never claim to know - Ask questions and it's best you work with a financial advisor.
Hope they seize his parents house paid entirely by FTX ....16million!
To be fair, when I heard that interview when SBF said his goal was to donate all his money… I instantly thought this guy was not trustworthy. No one starts a trading firm for charitable purposes…
Love it when journalist never ask hard questions.
We are currently in the jaws of the worst bear markets I have seen, the average stock has been cut in half, and the only way to make money this year has been to either short or to trade long in very short time frames. I'm still at a crossroads deciding if to liquidate my dipping $117k stock portfolio, what’s the best way to take advantage of this bear market?
The one glaring thing these ponzi schemes have in common is greed. Greed on the scammer's side, but worse, on the scammed side. You can't scam people who aren't greedy.