Since it was announced earlier this month that SBF would be a speaker at the Dealbook Summit, many people in the crypto community have been upset and confused by this. A live business channel feed from the New York Times was used to cover Bankman-video Fried’s chat at the Dealbook Summit.
Bankman-Fried appeared on camera in a simple black t-shirt, which was similar to what he wore before his fall. Here are a few of the biggest hits:
Early on in the session, when SBF said he was having a “rough month,” the people who had paid over $2,000 per ticket laughed out loud. Moderator Andrew Ross Sorkin got some laughs when he asked Bankman-Fried if his lawyers had suggested he do the interview. SBF answered simply, “No, they haven’t.”
SBF keeps trying to use the paper-thin excuse that he just “made mistakes” to explain his fraud. He often points to differences in “dashboards” and has even said that he “didn’t knowingly mix funds” from Alameda and FTX. He follows up this weak defense by saying that for a while, customer wires went straight to bank accounts in Alameda.
Bankman-Fried also denied that there had been any suspicious behavior around the possible BlockFi acquisition, which many people thought was just an attempt to buy BlockFi to increase FTX’s liquidity. SBF said that he “wasn’t doing it for any reason related to FTT.”
The Summit has a lot more to say, and it’s a good idea for anyone following the FTX story to go back and look at it again. But the main point is that SBF keeps saying in public that he just “made mistakes,” and it seems like he doesn’t know how his organization handles the money that its customers have given it.
