In short
Sam Bankman-Fried’s X account has shared a doc in his protection.
It claims that the bankrupt crypto alternate was by no means really bancrupt.
FTT could be price $22 billion at this time if FTX and Alameda survived, it provides.
An account as soon as utilized by Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and former CEO of bankrupt crypto alternate FTX, posted a hyperlink to a doc on X late Thursday arguing the corporate was by no means bancrupt, echoing arguments raised at his trial years in the past.
The 14-page doc, supposedly written by the disgraced wunderkind and his staff, claims the alternate didn’t go bankrupt due to a sweeping scheme to commit fraud and misappropriate $10 billion in clients’ funds, as a Manhattan jury discovered in 2023.
As a substitute, FTX confronted a “liquidity disaster” that was “on observe to be resolved by the tip of the month,” purportedly disrupted by “FTX’s exterior counsel,” who seized management. The doc goes on to say that “FTX was by no means bankrupt, even when its legal professionals positioned it out of business.”
The narrative echoed components of an interview that Bankman-Fried gave behind bars in March, through which he instructed conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson, “there was sufficient cash” to pay again each creditor on the time that the alternate collapsed.
As FTX circled the drain in 2022, the corporate purportedly had $25 billion in property, together with $16 billion in “FTX fairness worth,” towards $13 billion in liabilities, the doc claims.
The doc argues that had legal professionals not offered off property that the corporate had invested in, FTX and sister agency Alameda Buying and selling would have holdings price an estimated $136 billion.
That will entail a $14.3 billion stake in synthetic intelligence startup Anthropic and a $7.6 billion funding in retail brokerage Robinhood, amongst 12 different property.
That features XRP-linked fintech Ripple and Bitcoin mining agency Genesis Digital Property. The FTX Restoration Belief filed a lawsuit towards Genesis in Digital Property final month, looking for to get well $1.15 billion it claims was misappropriated by Bankman-Fried.
If FTX and Alameda nonetheless existed, the alternate’s FTT token could be price practically $22 billion, the doc claims. Prosecutors mentioned at Bankman-Fried’s felony trial that FTT, amongst different property, was used to prop up Alamada.
Two weeks in the past, conservative activist Laura Loomer claimed on X that there’s a “huge and well-funded” effort to influence U.S. President Donald Trump to pardon Bankman-Fried.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, a former rival of Bankman-Fried’s who helped spur FTT’s implosion, has since been pardoned by Trump after violating U.S. anti-money laundering legal guidelines on the world’s largest crypto alternate.
Earlier than sentencing Bankman-Fried to 25 years in jail in 2024, U.S. District Choose Lewis Kaplan mentioned, “A thief who takes his loot to Las Vegas and efficiently bets the stolen cash just isn’t entitled to a reduction on his sentence.”
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