SBF of FTX Digital talking; Hundreds of Millions were in the company’s account he says

By Dana Malcolm 

Staff Writer

#USA, January 15, 2023 – Not only is he maintaining his innocence in the Fall of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried says ‘it’s ridiculous’ that FTX US users haven’t gotten their funds back yet.

The former crypto CEO was speaking via blog post, the first since his arrest and bond, and said FTX US (which is only for US users and separate from FTX International) had enough money in the bank, around 350 million dollars, when he handed it over to new CEO John Ray III to pay off its US customers.

He substantiated his claims with what appeared to be a photo of a balance sheet he said belonged to FTX US.  Ray, who is expert in handling failed companies, had previously complained of how poor the record keeping by FTX executives was.

Bankman-Fried claimed he was ‘threatened and strong armed’ into choosing Ray as CEO by FTXs former lawyers and maintained that both international customers and US customers could recoup their losses.

“Even now, I believe that if FTX International were to reboot, there would be a real possibility of customers being made substantially whole.”

He once again denied what his other top executives had already confessed to, stealing funds.

“I didn’t steal funds, and I certainly didn’t stash billions away.   Nearly all of my assets were and still are utilizable to backstop FTX customers.” He declared

In the long post, he goes back to 2021 detailing what happened to Alameda’s assets and claiming the market crashes that put the company on its back have affected other major companies including Facebook.

Ignoring the comments made about mismanagement, he once again maintained that FTX could have recovered customers’ funds and he admitted no wrongdoing.