Sam Bankman-Fried, the man formerly behind failed US cryptocurrency scheme FTX, has denied committing fraud.
The online exchange was once valued at £26.5 billion but collapsed last month with the 30-year-old saying he had “a bad month” and had no money left.
Reports suggest FTX (an abbreviation of Futures Exchange) owes its 50 largest creditors upwards of $30 billion. It declared bankruptcy last month with Mr Bankman-Fried, who was valued at $15 billion as recently as October and compared to a young Warren Buffet, stepping down as chief executive on November 11.
The once-hailed ‘King of Crypto’ spoke to reporters, against his lawyers’ instructions, on Wednesday from his base in the Bahamas and said he had one credit card left with around $100,000 of debt on it.
But while investors have reported being unable to withdraw their funds from FTX, Mr Bankman-Fried has said he “didn’t ever try to commit fraud”.
The New York Times pressed him on the details of how much FTX owed and its dealings with other entities owned by Mr Bankman-Fried - including trading firm Alameda Research.
However, he did not get into specifics or amounts, instead he was critical of other parts of the FTX direction - saying his companies had been taking part in “greenwashing”. He also wrote off his own involvement in politics as a major donor as well as a voice for pandemic prevention and improved crypto regulation as “PR masquerading as do-gooderism”.
But he is not, he said, concerned about criminal or civil liability potentially facing him. “There's a time and a place for me to think about myself and my own future and I don’t think this is it,” he said - adding he did not lie.
He said that FTX was solvent and could pay back investors, although did not give any evidence to prove it.
