The former CEO of failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX says he’s down to his last $100,000—and that was just the last time he checked.
In an interview on Monday, Axios asked Sam Bankman-Fried—who was once said to be worth $26.5 billion—about his personal finances. His response: “Am I allowed to say a negative number?”
“I mean, I have no idea,” Bankman-Fried said. “I don’t know. I had $100,000 in my bank account last I checked.”
He said determining his wealth was “complicated,” and that basically everything he had was “tied up in the company,” which was valued at $32 billion before its collapse.
Of course, earlier this month FTX filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company suffered a liquidity crisis due to a customer exodus, leading to its collapse in just 48 hours and allegations of fraud.
“I wish I’d been more careful,” Bankman-Fried told Axios. “I obviously deeply regret this. I’ve been focusing on volume, rather than positions for balances. I should have been more responsible, and I should have been more on top of what was going on.”
He said he thinks regulation could have helped prevent FTX from imploding.
“There’s certainly an extent to which that I wish there had been someone who wasn’t me who was in charge of managing conflicts of interest,” he said, adding, “I wish that I had more reporting and transparency to outside parties.”
The implosion has shifted the image of Bankman-Fried, who often went by SBF, from a crypto hero and the next Warren Buffett to a cautionary tale who’s lost billions of his personal wealth and at least $1 billion of customers’ funds, Reuters previously reported.
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