‘One of the Most Hated People in the World’: Sam Bankman-Fried’s 250 Pages of Justifications

At the tip of a 15,000-word Twitter thread he by no means posted, Sam Bankman-Fried, the founding father of the failed cryptocurrency change FTX, supplied a blunt evaluation of his predicament.

“I’m broke and wearing an ankle monitor and one of the most hated people in the world,” he wrote. “There will probably never be anything I can do to make my lifetime impact net positive.”

He added: “And the truth is that I did what I thought was right.”

After Mr. Bankman-Fried was arrested, charged with fraud over FTX’s collapse and positioned in dwelling detention in December, he wrote lots of of pages of typically rambling self-justifications, starting from childhood reminiscences to mathematical calculations.

In a draft of his unsent posts, which he formatted as a collection of tweets spanning roughly 70 typed pages, he criticized a few of his closest colleagues, interspersing his arguments with images from his highschool years and inventory pictures of popcorn and a backyard maze. Every few pages, a key second within the narrative is accompanied with a hyperlink to a music video by Alicia Keys, Katy Perry or Rihanna.

Once a prolific poster on Twitter, now referred to as X, Mr. Bankman-Fried, 31, labeled the thread “a draft of a draft of a draft of an idea” and included hyperlinks to 29 different recordsdata about FTX. One doc, titled “Inception V2,” is a prolonged assault on the corporate’s chapter legal professionals, that includes a screenshot from the 2010 Christopher Nolan film. A separate hyperlink pulls up a spreadsheet itemizing Mr. Bankman-Fried’s Amazon orders from 2021.

The roughly 250 pages of paperwork, which haven’t been beforehand reported, present a window into Mr. Bankman-Fried’s mind-set through the eight months he spent in dwelling detention earlier than a decide revoked his bail in August. The writings additionally provide new particulars about his potential authorized protection past what his legal professionals have revealed in court docket, shedding mild on how he might justify his actions when his trial begins on Oct. 3.

Prosecutors have charged Mr. Bankman-Fried with orchestrating a scheme to funnel FTX buyer funds to a hedge fund he based, Alameda Research, in order that his corporations might make enterprise capital investments, purchase actual property and donate to politicians. He has pleaded not responsible and faces many years in jail if convicted.

During his home arrest, Mr. Bankman-Fried despatched the paperwork to Tiffany Fong, a social media influencer who has a YouTube channel concerning the crypto trade. Ms. Fong shared them with The New York Times.

“He liked that I don’t work for anybody,” she mentioned. “He thinks I can just sort of come to my own conclusions.”

A consultant for Mr. Bankman-Fried declined to remark.

In a number of paperwork, Mr. Bankman-Fried blamed Caroline Ellison, his former girlfriend and onetime lieutenant, for serving to to trigger FTX’s implosion. He described her as in poor health outfitted for the job he gave her as head of Alameda, claiming she had cried throughout a gathering with him and refused to institute buying and selling methods that may have protected his companies from a market crash.

“She continually avoided talking about risk management — dodging my suggestions — until it was too late,” he wrote in a doc titled “Alameda’s Failure to Hedge.” “Every time that I reached out with suggestions, it just made her feel worse. I’m sure that being exes didn’t help.”

In the Twitter draft, Mr. Bankman-Fried additionally criticized Sam Trabucco, who was co-chief government of Alameda. Mr. Trabucco and Ms. Ellison didn’t get alongside, the doc mentioned. And whereas Mr. Trabucco had good instincts for threat administration, Mr. Bankman-Fried wrote, he “was in the process of quiet quitting” by late 2021.

Mr. Trabucco most well-liked to spend his time “going on dates with a ton of guys while sailing around the world on a boat,” Mr. Bankman-Fried wrote. Then he linked to a music video, “Cheers (Drink to That)” by Rihanna.

Ms. Ellison and two of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s different high advisers have pleaded responsible to fraud expenses and agreed to testify towards him. A fourth pleaded responsible this month with out promising to cooperate. Mr. Trabucco has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

Lawyers for Mr. Trabucco and Ms. Ellison declined to remark.

Once hailed as a reliable pressure within the loosely regulated world of crypto, FTX imploded in November, costing prospects billions of {dollars} and devastating the trade. After his arrest, Mr. Bankman-Fried was granted bail and allowed to stay together with his dad and mom, who’re longtime regulation professors at Stanford, of their dwelling in Palo Alto, Calif. They bought a German shepherd named Sandor to behave as his guard canine.

For months, Mr. Bankman-Fried entertained company just like the writer Michael Lewis, who’s ending a e-book about him, in addition to a number of reporters.

Few individuals had as a lot entry as Ms. Fong, the influencer, who had struck up a web-based rapport with Mr. Bankman-Fried earlier than FTX failed. Ms. Fong visited him at his dad and mom’ dwelling greater than 10 occasions, she mentioned, and recorded conversations with him that she might finally launch.

During home arrest, Mr. Bankman-Fried spent a lot of his time within the examine, Ms. Fong mentioned, the place he performed laptop video games, arrange a chessboard and typically slept on the sofa. Most days, she mentioned, he labored on his authorized protection, recording ideas concerning the case on lots of of pages of Google paperwork. Mr. Bankman-Fried additionally advised her that his household was putting in a pickleball court docket for him within the yard.

Mr. Bankman-Fried gave Ms. Fong the paperwork in late January. It was not clear what he anticipated her to do with them. Ms. Fong, who misplaced cash within the collapse of the crypto firm Celsius Network, mentioned she sympathized with FTX’s victims and was skeptical of lots of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s claims. She despatched one doc to a former Alameda engineer, Aditya Baradwaj, who responded to her with a point-by-point rebuttal to Mr. Bankman-Fried, noting that Alameda’s hedging would have been “irrelevant” if FTX hadn’t misused buyer cash.

In the draft Twitter thread, Mr. Bankman-Fried traced the expansion of his companies from his childhood in Palo Alto to the penthouse he purchased within the Bahamas close to FTX’s headquarters. He recalled assembly Mr. Trabucco at a math camp, the place his future colleague sneaked out after curfew to bake cheesecake brownies, and he described his early admiration for Ms. Ellison, calling her “wicked smart.” He additionally inserted some private images, together with one which exhibits him holding a shirt that Mr. Trabucco had purchased him in highschool.

In one other part, Mr. Bankman-Fried posted a hyperlink to a doc he wrote in 2019, “Tonight We Are Young,” an account of a convention in Taiwan the place he interacted with Changpeng Zhao, referred to as CZ, the founding father of the Binance crypto change. (He additionally included a hyperlink to the “We Are Young” music video by Fun.)

“Tonight was a night about booze and women and lasers and loud, booming music, but there was an odd microclimate that seemed to follow me,” Mr. Bankman-Fried wrote. “I walked by CZ a few more times, and each time he broke eye contact with his eye candy and embraced me: People were thinking about us, a lot.”

In November, Mr. Zhao’s posts set off a run on deposits that helped immediate FTX’s implosion. A Binance consultant didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Some of Mr. Bankman-Fried’s paperwork elaborate on arguments that his legal professionals have made in court docket. In recordsdata titled “Inception V2,” “Inception V3” and “Inception Evidence,” Mr. Bankman-Fried claimed that Sullivan & Cromwell, the regulation agency overseeing FTX’s chapter, constructed the narrative that he misappropriated consumer funds.

“They’ve played it incredibly well,” he wrote. “Were it not destructive to just about everything I care about in life, I would tip my cap to them.”

A Sullivan & Cromwell spokesman declined to remark. Prosecutors have argued that Mr. Bankman-Fried’s claims concerning the agency quantity to “innuendo.”

Across a number of paperwork, Mr. Bankman-Fried additionally dissected his historical past with Ms. Ellison, writing that their relationship ended “the same way most of my relationships end.”

“They want more intimacy and commitment and public visibility than I do,” he wrote within the thread, “and I feel claustrophobic.”

In one other doc, he mentioned Ms. Ellison had refused to hedge Alameda’s aggressive buying and selling technique, regardless of his urging. At one level, he recalled, he despatched her a message that amounted to “the meanest thing I’ve ever said to her.” (He mentioned he now not had a file of the message.)

“If Alameda had hedged, it would have remained solvent and prevented the entire unhappy story,” he wrote.

His issues about Alameda heightened in spring 2022 as he packed for a visit to Washington, Mr. Bankman-Fried wrote within the Twitter draft. A bunch of workers together with Ms. Ellison was frantically discussing a potential deficit within the agency’s accounts. Mr. Bankman-Fried was solely half-engaged, he wrote, however had heard sufficient to comprehend that the dialog centered on an account labeled fiat@ — the car that regulators have mentioned FTX executives used to redirect buyer funds into different initiatives.

“I had heard that name before, but I’d never really known exactly what it was,” he wrote.

When she pleaded responsible, Ms. Ellison mentioned she and Mr. Bankman-Fried had conspired to shore up Alameda’s funds with buyer cash. He has denied misusing the funds.

“As a general matter, I don’t lie,” he wrote in a doc titled “Truth.” “It’s something that I believe fairly strongly in.”