Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced 30-year-old co-founder of failed cryptocurrency exchange FTX ( FTT-USD ), provided his take on the events leading to the demise of his empire in a Thursday Substack post denying federal allegations that he swindled $8B in customer funds. "I didn’t steal funds, and I certainly didn’t stash billions away," the former FTX CEO wrote . Bankman-Fried, who has been accused of defrauding investors and FTX customers, pleaded not guilty earlier this month to eight criminal charges in federal court, including wire fraud and conspiracy to pursue money laundering. SBF said FTX's trading desk Alameda Research "failed to sufficiently hedge its market exposure," as its total net assets cratered from around $100B at the beginning of 2022 to some $10B in October. The crunch was a consequence of "large broad market crashes" across stocks and crypto, he added, dismissing allegations that Alameda's liquidity crisis was a result of misconduct. He also reiterated that FTX's American division, FTX US, "is fully solvent and always has been," adding the entity had more than $350M of net cash on hand beyond customer balances just after he resigned from his CEO role and FTX filed for Chapter 11 protection on Nov. 11. His claims of innocence come even after Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research, and Gary Wang, an FTX co-founder, both pleaded guilty to criminal charges in December and are cooperating with the Southern District of New York as prosecutors build their case against Bankman-Fried. A third confidant of SBF was said to have met with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York earlier this week to seek a plea deal. In a conference on Nov. 30, SBF said he "never tried to commit fraud."
