Mr. Fried was at the height of his success, living a luxurious life, but suddenly collapsed.
Former cryptocurrency entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison last week after being convicted in one of the largest financial fraud cases in history.during an interview abc newsMr Fried said he regretted his actions.
“That’s a lot of what I think about every day,” he told the outlet.
Mr. Fried was at the height of his success, living a luxurious life, but suddenly collapsed.
In 2023, he was found guilty of multiple fraud charges following the tragic collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange, FTX.
“I never thought that what I was doing was illegal. But I tried to hold myself to a high standard and I certainly didn’t live up to that standard,” he told ABC News in an email.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the MIT grad who became a billionaire before the age of 30, has conquered the cryptocurrency world at breakneck speed, turning the small startup he co-founded in 2019, FTX, into the world’s second largest Big trading platform.
But in November 2022, the FTX empire collapsed, unable to cope with massive withdrawal requests from customers, who were horrified to learn that some of the funds stored by the company had been used for high-risk Sam Bankman-Fried’s personal hedge fund Alameda Research operate.
During the trial, some of Sam Bankman-Fried’s closest associates said he was key to all the decisions that led to FTX losing $8 billion.
“I’ve heard and seen the despair, frustration and sense of betrayal from thousands of customers; they deserve to be paid in full at current prices,” he told the outlet.
“This could have and should have happened in November 2022, it could and should have happened today. It’s painful to see them waiting day after day,” he added.
He added that he “felt the pain” of his colleagues because he had “thrown away everything they had poured their lives into” and the charities he supported “because their funding had suffered nothing but a loss of reputation.” nor”.
“I am haunted every day by what I have lost. I never meant to hurt anyone or take anyone’s money. But I am the CEO of FTX and I am responsible for what happens in the company and when you are responsible for that It doesn’t matter why it went bad. I would give anything to help repair even some of the damage. I’m doing the best I can in prison, but not being able to do more is just frustrating,” he told ABC News.
The downfall began on November 7, 2022, when a rival executive tweeted about FTX’s financial stability, causing panic among customers and triggering a massive bank run. The platform lost billions of dollars. Despite efforts to stem the bleeding, the damage was irreversible, resulting in the loss of more than $8 billion in customer funds and the company’s bankruptcy.
During Bankman-Fried’s trial, two conflicting accounts emerged about his involvement, with some describing him as a brilliant but unwitting CEO, while others accused him of deliberately inhaling Take billions of dollars of client money away.
