"I made a lot of mistakes, but I never tried to commit fraud," Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and ex-CEO of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, said Wednesday at the New York Times Dealbook conference. His remarks come despite reports that FTX loaned out over half of its customer funds (some $10B) to Alameda Research, an FTX-affiliated trading firm, in an attempt to fund risky bets. "I wasn't trying to commingle funds," Bankman-Fried said, even though Bloomberg reported earlier this week that some FTX customers were told to send wire transfers through Alameda, highlighting their tangled relationship despite the fact that FTX and Alameda were entirely separate businesses. FTX and Alameda, which owned a ton of FTX Token ( FTT-USD ), the crypto issued by FTX, were "substantially more" connected than intended, SBF said, while noting his "massive failure of risk management and oversight." He touched on his poor internal labeling of bank-related accounts, saying the FTT and solana ( SOL-USD ) used as collateral was not marked "the way I wish I had from a risk perspective." Starting on November 6, when Binance tweeted that it will sell its position in FTX Token ( FTT-USD ), SBF knew there was a problem about the potential for "substantial losses for Alameda. I didn’t think it was going to be a massive loss for FTX customers, more like Alameda is going to be really tight on funds." FTX and its more than 130 affiliates filed for bankruptcy on November 11 after the discovery of a multi-billion dollar balance sheet shortfall that triggered massive customer outflows. “I wasn’t running Alameda, I didn’t know exactly what was going on, I didn’t know the size of their position,” SBF said. “A lot of these are things I’ve learned over the last month When asked whether he's concerned about criminal liability, SBF responded, "I don't personally think I have... it's not what I'm focusing on. There will be a time and a place for me to think about myself and my future but this isn't it." 6:011 p.m. ET: Event concludes. 6:09 p.m. ET: SBF, a former billionaire, now has "close to nothing," he said when asked about how much money he has left. "I have one working credit card left. I think it might be $100K or something like that in that bank account. I put everything I had into FTX." 6:02 p.m. ET: SBF said he doesn't know what his future holds; "a lot of it is not in my hands at this point." Update at 5:50 p.m. ET: SBF's political donations "were mostly for pandemic prevention, on both sides of the aisle," SBF said. In FTX's first court hearing on November 22, a counsel to FTX said SBF treated his trading platform as his own "personal fiefdom."
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