Bankman-Fried Claims FTX Was Never Insolvent

SBF claims that customer funds could have been fully repaid after the 2022 collapse. He also accused bankruptcy lawyers and CEO John J. Ray III of unnecessarily forcing FTX into Chapter 11 proceedings for financial gain. Bankman-Fried’s claims contrast with court findings that Alameda secretly borrowed customer funds through a backdoor system, leading to FTX’s $8 billion shortfall. Bankman-Fried Defends FTX Solvency Sam Bankman-Fried, the convicted founder of the defunct FTX crypto exchange, resurfaced with a new statement claiming that FTX and its trading arm Alameda Research were “never insolvent” and that customer funds could have been fully repaid soon after the platform’s 2022 collapse. In a 15-page document dated Sept. 30, Bankman-Fried argued that FTX entered its November 2022 liquidity crisis with $25 billion in assets and $16 billion in equity value. This was more than enough to cover the roughly $8 billion in withdrawal demands that triggered the exchange’s downfall. The statement also repeats claims that Bankman-Fried was barred from presenting during his trial, and mentions that FTX’s implosion was purely a liquidity problem, not insolvency. He alleged that the company was on track to recover by the end of the month, but that its external legal counsel and new CEO, John J. Ray III, “seized control” and steered FTX into bankruptcy unnecessarily. The document accuses the bankruptcy lawyers of being “heavily incentivized” to file for Chapter 11, misrepresenting the company’s finances, and discarding key assets that could have been used to repay customers and creditors. Bankman-Fried’s team claimed that almost $1 billion in fees were paid to consultants during the bankruptcy process, while $7 billion worth of FTT tokens were discarded and several company assets sold below market value. Additionally, the document argued that, if managed properly, the combined assets and equity once held by Alameda would now be worth around $136 billion. The exchange’s collapse in November of 2022 is still one of the largest financial scandals in crypto history. Court evidence later revealed that Alameda had a “secret backdoor” to FTX’s systems, which allowed it to borrow unlimited customer funds without collateral and inflate its balance sheet with FTX’s native token, FTT. When those practices came to light, a wave of withdrawals exposed an $8 billion shortfall and triggered a liquidity crisis across the industry, which wiped out an estimated $200 billion in market capitalization. Bankman-Fried was arrested a month after the collapse and convicted in November of 2023 on multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy for stealing billions in customer funds. Now serving a 25-year prison sentence, he is appealing the conviction and seeking clemency from President Donald Trump. The president already pardoned Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht and Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao.