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

Because the fall of his crypto empire on November 11, virtually all the things has been mentioned about Sam Bankman-Fried.

His crypto bros referred to as him “felony.” They accused him of mendacity to the shoppers 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 all over the world 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 a lot of the blame.”

Binance is the world’s largest crypto trade.

Regulators in the USA 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 would Be Afraid’

The Bankman-Fried regime has been closely criticized by the brand new FTX CEO answerable for 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 a whole failure of company controls and such a whole absence of reliable monetary info as occurred right here,” wrote John Ray, in a 30-page doc filed with the USA Chapter Court docket within the District of Delaware.

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

The insolvency of FTX was as a consequence of a liquidity shortfall when shoppers 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 fees have been introduced towards him, even if FTX’s prime 50 collectors are claiming $3 billion from the trade and tens of millions of retail traders might by no means get better their investments.

However for billionaire Mark Cuban, Bankman-Fried ought to find yourself in jail. That is what he has simply said 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 would 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 concept 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 keeping 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, considered one 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 personalised emoji.

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

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

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