12/1/2022: Lies, Damn Lies and Oversights

SBF blamed the FTX collapse on his oversight

Andrew Ross Sorkin interviewed SBF yesterday as shown above. I watched the whole interview and tried very hard not to vomit. There’s practically no new information from this interview. All SBF said was that he didn’t mean to hurt customers and he admitted to many oversights in FTX's governance. He didn’t intentionally co-mingle FTX customer funds with Alameda Research. He didn’t know FTX/Alameda had so much leverage. He didn’t know how much Alameda owed BlockFi ($680 millions according to BlockFi ). He didn’t know why one of the properties FTX purchased ended up being under his parent’s name. He didn’t know until the last minute that FTX didn’t have enough funds to meet customer withdrawals. But somehow he knew FTX/Alameda had profits and that’s why he could spend so much on political donations and philanthropy. He didn’t think he should go to jail for things he didn’t know.

If people can commit crimes, blame the failure on their own incompetence and go away unscathed, then anyone can do anything and just pretend he or she is stupid. If I were a CEO of a crypto exchange and I lent customer deposits to another company I own with crappy collateral which I unintentionally and accidentally think is solid, am I guilty of anything? If not, by all means I should become the CEO of a crypto exchange, do whatever I want and pretend to be stupid when I get caught.

This world is f**ked up.

Update: Here is another interview worth watching from Good Morning America.