GuShiio.com In an interview, Sam Bankman-Fried detailed his views on FTX bankruptcy, legal struggles, the U.S. political situation and the future of the cryptocurrency industry.
Interviewer: Ari Hoffman, deputy editor-in-chief of The New York Sun
Compilation and organization: Compare BitpushNews
In an interview, Sam Bankman-Fried detailed his views on FTX bankruptcy, legal struggles, the U.S. political situation and the future of the cryptocurrency industry. He insisted that FTX never went bankrupt but only suffered a liquidity crisis, criticized the injustice of FTX’s bankruptcy administrators and the U.S. judicial system. His case was a “victim” of political struggle, and expressed his willingness to grant President Trump a possible pardon and cautious expectations for the future. He also shared some personal insights, such as his experience falling from one of the richest people in the world.
The following is a summary of the full text of the interview. For ease of reading, the dialogue content of the interview video has been appropriately organized.
AH: Hi Sam, this is Ari. Nice talking to you. We have limited time, so I want to get straight to the topic. I know you have some thoughts on the current political environment, especially regarding the issue of pardons. In addition, your prosecutor Danielle Sassoon has recently become the news. Why don’t you talk about your thoughts first?
SBF: Of course, a lot has happened recently. As you mentioned, my prosecutor Danielle Sasson recently made the news over a dispute with the Trump Justice Department. My then-Judge, Judge Kaplan, was also a Trump appointee in New York, which involved the broader political battle between the incoming Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) and what they saw as Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ).
President Trump’s views on the Justice Department, coupled with the distrust of the judicial system among some in his camp, make the situation even more complicated. They believe the Justice Department has become increasingly politicized over the past few decades, especially recently.
AH: Do you think your case is related to this political struggle?
For example, the judge allowed the prosecution to tell the jury that “all investors ‘money is gone,” but also refused to allow my defense team to refute it. The truth is, this is not the truth at all. This became a key point in the trial, and the jury heard the wrong story.
AH: What do you think of the recent turmoil in the Department of Justice, especially in the Southern District Court (SDNY)? Do you think your case also involves dereliction of duty on the part of prosecutors?
SBF: I think there are some similarities. For example, you can look at the sentences received by all those who pleaded guilty. We have a Republican who pleaded guilty to only a few counts, but was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison-four times the length of the other three men combined. At the same time, other people who pleaded guilty appeared to have been treated more lenient, and the differences in sentences were clear.
In addition, prosecutors threatened his wife, who was a Republican candidate for Congress at the time, and would sue her if he didn’t cooperate. This approach is very political.
AH: In the media, you are portrayed as a millionaire who mainly finances the Democratic Party, while donations to the Republican Party are only symbolic. Do you think there is a misunderstanding of your political stance?
SBF: This is actually two-pronged. In 2020, I did donate a lot to the Biden camp, but in part because I didn’t want the Democratic Party to become the party led by Bernie Sanders. However, by 2022, my political stance has changed.
I spend a lot of time in Washington dealing with lawmakers, regulators and administrative agencies, especially on crypto policy. I am very disappointed with the Biden administration and the Democratic Party, especially on the issue of cryptocurrency regulation. Their policies are devastating for the entire industry. Republicans are relatively easier to cooperate. So, I spent more of my time in Washington with Republicans trying to stop the Democratic government from taking excessive regulatory measures. The Biden administration is very disruptive and difficult to cooperate. Frankly, the Republican Party is more rational. I spent a lot of time in Washington, D.C., doing everything I could to cross partisan lines and prevent the government from taking tough measures against the industry.
AH: People have talked a lot about the climate change at tech giants, like Zuckerberg and Bezos, people you should have interacted with, and do you think if the trial hadn’t happened to you, you would be on the inauguration stage? Or, let me ask it another way, do you see what is happening? Do you understand? Or, or how do you view it?
SBF: I obviously can’t speak for them, but I think they saw some of the same things I’ve seen over the past four years. You see, Zuckerberg expressed something that was meant to be a reasonable, constructive, disinformation stance about the government that ultimately turned into something more just political censorship. I think they have encountered some similar setbacks when working with the Biden administration, as many people in the crypto industry find, anything related to business and ultimately freedom of speech.
AH: Do you believe your trial was used as a political tool?
SBF: I think so to some extent. Similar situations exist in many high-profile cases, involving prosecutors ‘careers, media attention and political influence. I don’t think this was a fair trial.
AH: What do you think of politicians issuing meme coins? Well, have you heard of TRUMP coins? He issued it before his inauguration.
SBF: I’ve heard of it, but I don’t know that much about it because, you know, my sources of information are a little limited in prison. But I’m not surprised to see politicians getting involved in the digital realm, and you know, I expect that over time we will see more and more areas of life getting involved, in part because it’s a more flexible medium than traditional finance. There are many reasons why this industry is growing so rapidly and innovating so much, but one reason is that it is so much easier to build things in it. Infrastructure is updated and more open.
AH: How do you view bankruptcy proceedings? Do you think FTX is really bankrupt?
SBF: FTX was never bankrupt. This is a liquidity crisis, not an issue of insolvency. We had enough assets at the time to repay all our clients ‘funds. But due to the takeover of law firms and the way they handled it, the process has become extremely slow and even misleading the public.
Customers could have gotten their funds back in November 2022. But it took two years for the bankruptcy administrator to admit there was enough money. They initially claimed only US$1 billion in assets, but have now discovered US$15 billion in assets. This is a complete management failure.
AH: What are your thoughts on the use of funds by FTX and Alameda Research?
SBF: FTX is a leveraged trading platform where customers trade using margin. Alameda Research is FTX’s main market maker and plays an important role in the market.
All asset flows can be found in the financial statements. We have a clear record of assets and liabilities, and at all times, our assets are always greater than our liabilities. The problem is that the liquidity crisis has caused market panic, making it impossible to liquidate funds quickly.
AH: Do you think you have been wrongly convicted?
SBF: Absolutely. Obviously, when I look back on past decisions, I will do something different. But the most important thing is that I should insist on not letting Sullvan Cromwell take over FTX in November 2022. I should continue to deal with liquidity issues rather than let them take over and completely mislead customers. But I didn’t. You know, after that, there were painful years of waiting, not just me waiting, but also millions of customers who were mistakenly told there was no money left and only recently got any payment.
This has resulted in millions of customers having to wait two years to get their funds back, when in fact their funds should have been safe from the start.
AH: I think for most people, you know, the amount of money you have and handle is almost unimaginable. What is your relationship with money? I mean, there is a lot of writing written about your interest in effective altruism, and various other things, but you know, from one perspective, what’s it like to have that much money? How about losing them all of a sudden?
SBF: I basically divide it into two categories. One is my own livelihood, such as personal consumption. From this perspective, my life has not changed much. You know, I live on my salary, which is a decent salary,$200,000 a year, but not a few billion dollars. I haven’t changed my lifestyle that much, I really haven’t been so tempted, and I have never really understood the meaning of yachts. It was never something I was really interested in. Instead, I thought about my impact on the world.
I basically see it through the lens of an effective altruist, which means I have a lot of money to donate, and what is the most beneficial thing I think I can do with it? Some of it is used in, you know, health causes around the world, where people, you know, die of diseases that they should never die of, and malaria is just one of them. Some are used for animal welfare, some are used for pandemic prevention, and various other causes. Of course, some are also used in politics. That’s what I think about on a larger scale, because frankly, you know, billions of people in the world, you know, millions of people die every year from neglected tropical diseases, and this is an area where you can really think about it on a very large scale, and in terms of funding, billions of dollars can actually be used meaningfully.
AH: If you can gain freedom, what are your plans?
SBF: You know, money is not the most important thing. I don’t miss money. Freedom is. Currently, I am still waiting for the outcome of the appeal. If successful, I will return to meaningful work, especially in the fields of technology and finance.
AH: If you found yourself free again, in any way, I mean, what would you think, what would you possibly do? Want to go back to the cryptocurrency space?
SBF: Obviously, this is very far away and I will think seriously about what I want to do in the future, even then, but I try not to think too much now because there is nothing I can do about it.
AH: What do you miss most in prison?
SBF: Freedom. What I miss most is the ability to obtain information and make decisions at any time. I used to work hard to build something new, but now I can only passively wait.
AH: What are your plans next? Well, right away, do you have any plans for the next few weeks and months? Does it feel like there is no difference, or does it feel like there is a narrative arc?
SBF: You know, life is pretty flat, well, there’s nothing to do in prison. Well, you know, I’m used to working hard and there’s nothing to do here. But, from a high-level perspective, one thing is definitely at hand, and that is the resolution of my appeal. Well, we have oral arguments, you know, in the next, you know, maybe three to six months. Well, you know, I feel cautiously optimistic, but the odds are always against anyone working in the federal criminal justice system. So, cautious optimism just means that I think there is an opportunity and hope that the judges will be open and give a careful and critical look at what is happening. In addition, prisoners don’t really control their lives, so a lot of things happen to me, not by me.
AH: Thank you, Sam. I hope you can get a fair result as soon as possible.
