Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the former CEO of FTX, appeared in court on Tuesday with Mark Cohen, his newly hired attorney. SBF’s legal team asked Bahamian judge Joyann Ferguson-Pratt to release SBF on bail with an ankle bracelet. According to reports, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, SBF’s parents, attended the lengthy court hearing. Judge Ferguson-Pratt ended the hearing by rejecting SBF’s request for bail and ordering Bankman-Fried to remain in the Bahamian jail until February 8, 2023.
AFR Report: Bankman-Media Fried’s Tour Has Ended. Insiders at FTX Belonged to a “Wirefraud”-Named Secret Signal Chat Group.
Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), the co-founder of FTX, experienced a complete paradigm shift during the first week of November. The first straw was the publication by Coindesk of an exposé on SBF’s quantitative trading company Alameda Research and the vast amount of FTT tokens it was holding. Following the publication of the report, FTX and Alameda came under the spotlight, and Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, announced that his exchange would be selling off all of its FTT tokens.
These two incidents increased the likelihood that FTX and Alameda were bankrupt, and on November 8, 2022, Binance announced that it would buy FTX following a thorough analysis of the company’s financials. On November 9, 2022, at 4:00 p.m. (ET), the world’s largest cryptocurrency asset exchange by trade volume announced that the deal had fallen through.
At this point, all of the digital assets that were in FTX’s bank accounts had either been withdrawn by customers—many of whom were natives of the Bahamas—or had simply vanished. SBF revealed that FTX and Alameda had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, along with about 130 related companies, two days after Binance withdrew from the agreement.
SBF also disclosed that in order to manage the bankruptcy and restructuring process, John J. Ray III took over as CEO of FTX in his place. Since the bankruptcy filing, SBF has conducted a significant number of interviews with the media while troubling information was being reported by a number of media outlets.
All of the digital assets in FTX’s bank accounts at this point had either been withdrawn by users, many of whom were Bahamas citizens, or had simply disappeared. Two days after Binance withdrew from the agreement, SBF disclosed that FTX and Alameda had also applied for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, along with about 130 other related companies.
SBF also revealed that John J. Ray III replaced him as CEO of FTX to oversee the bankruptcy and restructuring process. SBF has given numerous interviews to the media since the bankruptcy filing, even as alarming information was being reported by a number of media outlets.