Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of FTX, apologized to FTX employees.
In a letter to employees, the SBF said it was “frozen at the pressure”.
Sam Bankman-Fried Apologizes
In the letter shared on FTX’s company Slack and shared by CoinDesk, SBF said it was very sorry for what happened.
In a statement, SBF did not respond to allegations that client funds were used to support Alameda Research.
“I didn’t want any of that to happen and I would give anything to go back and do it all over again. You were my family.
I’ve lost that now and our old house is just an empty monitor warehouse. When I turned around, there was no one left to talk to.
I was stunned by the pressure, leaks and Binance [request to buy FTX] and said nothing.”
Sam Bankman-Fried stepped down as CEO on November 11, just before filing for bankruptcy on behalf of his company.
According to SBF, FTX had approximately $60 billion in collateral and $2 billion in debt in the spring. However, with the market crash, this coverage was halved.
The “drying up” of liquidity in the industry meant that FTX’s collateral was valued at approximately $25 billion, while its debts had risen to $8 billion. In November, this amount decreased to 17 billion dollars.
The SBF said what it called the “attack” in November reduced collateral by another $8 billion.
“Credits were not used for personal consumption, but mainly for plans to grow our business, including buying Binance”
Finally, SBF said there may still be a chance to save the company:
“I believe there is billions of dollars of interest from new investors who can bring clients together. But I can’t promise anything will happen to you, because it’s not my choice.”
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