Bankman-Fried’s message to staff over FTX crisis is leaked

Amid the recent crisis that has wreaked havoc across the entire cryptocurrency market, slashing its market capitalization and, among many others, the price of its largest asset, Bitcoin (BTC), an internal message from the CEO of the involved crypto exchange regarding its next steps was reportedly leaked.

Indeed, a pseudonymous Twitter whistleblower Cobie has shared a Slack message allegedly sent by FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried to his employees, leaked to the tipster anonymously via Telegram, as he said in a tweet on November 10.

A msg from SBF on FTX slack that got leaked to me by some telegram anon, have verified its real w another pic.twitter.com/XMjIM9nSkx
— Cobie (@cobie) November 10, 2022

What does the plan include?

In the message, the authenticity of which Cobie said was verified, SBF detailed the plan to tackle the crisis that has engulfed the exchange and spread across the landscape like wildfire. Specifically, he announced a raise for the next week, explaining that:

“The goal of this raise will be first to do right by customers; second by current and possible new investors; third all of you guys. And in, and only in, a hypothetical world where everything turns out amazingly and everyone else is done right, maybe myself as an investor, fourth and last – but that’s not a particularly important part of anything we’re going to be doing as a company.”

Furthermore, Bankman-Fried stressed that “the raise may end up being a combined FTX Intl + FTX US infusion, but I don’t want to be overconfident here,” adding that the company also had talks with Tron (TRX) founder Justin Sun regarding his potential participation in the raise.

On Binance backing out

Commenting on rival Binance putting forward then quickly withdrawing its bailout offer citing financial and legal reasons, FTX CEO said that:

“I shouldn’t throw stones in a glass house, so I’ll hold back a bit here, except to say: probably they never really planned to go through with the deal, but so be it; we’re going to do our jobs here regardless.”

Finally, he promised to offer what he admitted was owed to everyone: “(a) a more thorough explanation of what happened and what went wrong; (b) management structure and leadership going forward, (c) a public post, and (d) get on top of what’s going on with payroll etc.”

FTX crisis deepens as new information comes to light

As a reminder, FTX’s liquidity troubles started when Binance sold all of its FTX Token (FTT) holdings after it was revealed that the balance sheet of SBF’s trading company Alameda Research mainly consisted of FTT holdings, demonstrating a close connection between the exchange and Alameda.

More recently, Bankman-Fried reportedly transferred about $4 billion of FTX funds secured by tokens such as FTT and shares in trading platform Robinhood to Alameda, part of which entailed customer deposits, in a transaction he allegedly failed to communicate to other executives, as Finbold reported.