On Tuesday (6 December 2022), CZ, who is Co-Founder and CEO of the world’s largest crypto exchange (by trading volume), addressed criticisms that he was somehow responsible for the collapse of now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX.
On 2 November 2022, the collapse of SBF’s FTX empire started when CoinDesk published an article (titled “Divisions in Sam Bankman-Fried’s Crypto Empire Blur on His Trading Titan Alameda’s Balance Sheet”) , which stated that the now bankrupt Alameda Research “had $14.6 billion of assets as of June 30, according to a private document CoinDesk reviewed” and that “much of it is the FTT token issued by FTX, another Bankman-Fried company.”
On 6 November 2022, CZ announced that Binance had decided to sell its remaining $FTT holdings:
CZ went on to say:
“We will try to do so in a way that minimizes market impact. Due to market conditions and limited liquidity, we expect this will take a few months to complete. Binance always encourages collaboration between industry players. Regarding any speculation as to whether this is a move against a competitor, it is not. Our industry is in its nascency and every time a project publicly fails it hurts every user and every platform. We typically hold tokens for the long term. And we have held on to this token for this long. We stay transparent with our actions.“
Then, on 8 November 2022, SBF announced that FTX and Binance had “come to an agreement on a strategic transaction with Binance” for FTX:
A few minutes later, CZ took to Twitter to announce that FTX had asked Binance to help it with “a significant liquidity crunch”, and that Binance had decided to protect FTX’s customers by signing a non-binding letter of intent (LOI) to fully acquire FTX:
The next day, Binance announced why it was not able to go ahead with the plan to fully acquire FTX.com, pointing out that although it was hoping to “support FTX’s customers to provide liquidity”, the issues it discovered — as part of its due diligence process and via the various news reports about FTX — were “beyond” its “control or ability to help”:
On 14 November 202, CZ said that Binance had never shorted $FTT and that it still holds $FTT tokens, which it stopped selling after SBF called (on 8 November 2022) to ask CZ to help FTX with its “liquidity” crisis:
Since 8 November 2022, when SBF announced that FTX had a liquidity crisis, some people in the crypto community have been painting CZ as the bad guy and claiming that he is not a hero or saviour despite CZ announcing on 14 November 2022 that “Binance is forming an industry recovery fund, to help projects who are otherwise strong, but in a liquidity crisis.”
Well, earlier today, CZ took to Twitter to address some of the “wrong narratives” he had come across in the past few weeks:
“Crypto doesn’t need saving. Crypto is fine. It’s the beauty of decentralization. We are just part of it. We want to help other good projects that may be in a cash crunch because of recent events. It’s in our collective best interest… FTX killed themselves (and their users) because they stole billions of dollars of user funds. Period… Lying is never with good intentions…
“No healthy business can be destroyed by a tweet. However, there was a tweet that may have, Caroline’s tweet 16 minutes after mine on Nov 6. Data shows it was the real cause for people to dump FTT… She gave her floor price away…
“SBF perpetuated a narrative painting me and other people as the ‘bad guys’. It was critical in maintaining the fantasy that he was a ‘hero.’ SBF is one of the greatest fraudsters in history, he is also a master manipulator when it comes to media and key opinion leaders…
“We don’t focus on competitors because it’s a waste of time and resources when the industry has only touched 6% of the population. We want multiple exchanges, multiple blockchains, multiple wallets, etc, to co-exist in the ecosystem… Back to Building!“
