Sam Bankman-Fried, the co-founder and former CEO of crypto exchange FTX before it suddenly went bankrupt this month, told Axios that he has just $100,000 left after his empire imploded due to admitted financial mismanagement. The 30-year-old had a net worth of over $27 billion at one point.
“Am I allowed to say a negative number?” Bankman-Fried said, when the outlet asked about his finances. “I mean, I have no idea. I don’t know. I had $100,000 in my bank account last I checked.”
Videos by VICE
“It’s complicated. Basically everything I had was just tied up in the company,” he said.
FTX is currently going through bankruptcy proceedings, and what has been uncovered so far doesn’t look good. The current FTX CEO, installed to oversee the bankruptcy, helped clean up Enron after its collapse and said that FTX is even worse.
“Never in my career have I seen such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information as occurred here,” he said in a court filing.
After FTX filed for bankruptcy, Bloomberg wrote down the value of Bankman-Fried’s companies down to $1, taking him off of the billionaire list. He still had a 7.4 percent stake in trading app Robin Hood, but that is now in doubt as it’s the focus of a lawsuit brought by bankrupt crypto-lending firm BlockFi that is seeking to recover those shares to cover debts owed by Bankman-Fried.
Bankman-Fried’s finances are not fully known. As far as anyone knows, he’s still based in the Bahamas, where FTX spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying up properties for staff and Bankman-Fried’s family. His comments on his current wealth are also vague, and money in a bank account doesn’t account for all of an individual’s net worth. Axios will be posting the full interview with Bankman-Fried on Thursday.
Since FTX’s collapse, Bankman-Fried has launched a PR offensive that has seen him strike an apologetic tone and, often, claim ignorance regarding the activities of his own company. He has said that he doesn’t know how to code. Claiming poverty (for a former multi-billionaire, anyway) certainly fits into this pattern.
