FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried took to Twitter on Thursday to apologise for not performing his duties properly as the head of the crypto currency exchange. He tweeted that he was “sorry,” for all the troubles and also admitted that he “f—ed up” and “should have done better.” Sam Bankman-Fried also made a signifnact announcement regarding Alameda Research, a quantitative trading firm cofounded by him.
He said that Alameda Research is winding down its trading operations amnidst serious liquity crunch faced by FTX.
“I also should have been communicating more very recently,” wrote Bankman-Fried. “Transparently–my hands were tied during the duration of the possible Binance deal; I wasn’t particularly allowed to say much publicly. But of course it’s on me that we ended up there in the first place.”
Sam Bankman-Fried who was once considered as young hero of crypto currency world is currently approaching various financial players for funding which will help to save FTX from bankruptcy. FTX which had posted a valuation of 32 billion dollar at the beginning of calendar year have had troubling times for past few days. Large amount of withdrawals and external factors pushed the liquidity levels of the firm to an alarmingly low rate.
The FTX CEO also provided the latest on where things stand with his beleaguered crypto exchange.
Excluding its U.S. business, Bankman-Fried said the international operation has a total market value of assets and collateral that is higher than client deposits, but he said that is “different from liquidity for delivery–as you can tell from the state of withdrawals.”
“The full story here is one I’m still fleshing out every detail of, but as a very high level, I f—ed up twice,” wrote Bankman-Fried.
The FTX CEO said his first mistake was poor internal labeling of bank-related accounts, which meant that he was “substantially off” on his sense of users’ margin. “I thought it was way lower.”
He said that on Sunday the exchange saw roughly $5 billion of withdrawals, which he called “the largest by a huge margin.”
By Wednesday, Bankman-Fried told investors that the company was facing a shortfall of at least $8 billion and needed emergency funding, according to a person familiar with the matter.
In Thursday’s tweet thread, Bankman-Fried said his No. 1 priority “by far” is “doing right by users.” To that end, he said, the team is spending the week doing everything it can to raise liquidity.
“I can’t make any promises about that,” he said. “But I’m going to try.”
“Every penny of that–and of the existing collateral–will go straight to users, unless or until we’ve done right by them,” he pledged Thursday.
“After that, investors–old and new–and employees who have fought for what’s right for their career, and who weren’t responsible for any of the f— ups.”
Bankman-Fried also said he’s in talks with a number of players about next steps.