By Darren Parkin
Sam Bankman-Fried agreed to a live interview – admittedly against the advice of his lawyers – during a New York Times event yesterday.
Speaking via video link from his home in the Bahamas, the 31-year-old founder of the now collapsed FTX exchange spent more than an hour talking with an interviewer.
In the early moments of the discussion, Bankman-Fried was asked if he thought his legal representatives were of the opinion that it was a good idea to be speaking. He responded with a quickfire “No, they’re very much not”.
“The classic advice is don’t say anything, recede into a hole. That’s not who I am. It’s not who I want to be. I think I have a duty to talk, I have a duty to explain what happened, I have a duty to do what’s right and to try and help customers out here,” he added.
“And I don’t see what good is accomplished by just sitting in a room pretending the outside world doesn’t exist.”
It was a brief moment of pseudo humility – and even borderline humour – that looked like it would set the tone of something that might just unlock some of the heavy-duty doors to the mind of a person who has rapidly been propelled from being an almost hero figure to the out-and-out pantomime villain of cryptocurrency.
The interview was a gold-plated, silk-wrapped gift of an opportunity to ask questions, and back those questions up by probing and exploring the answers. Answers that the crypto space – and, moreover, those people affected by FTX’s implosion – desperately need.
However, very little was said. A slew of grey, scripted questions did nothing more than scratch the surface of what the baying crowd really wanted to hear. If anything, it just kept hovering a metal detector over the same patch of ground that dozens of metal detectorists had already trodden.
Like a record on repeat, SBF’s voice emulated that of an embarrassed little boy being ushered under the bright lights of the village hall stage to play Joseph in the school Nativity. With the adoring eyes of nervous parents gazing over him, he sings the line “Look, I screwed up. I’m sorry, and I have to fix this for those who were hurt”. Again, and again, and again.
One hour and 14 minutes of barely anything in the way of insight and revelation, bookended by a fawning introduction and a separation that had the interviewer pretty much reaching for a handkerchief to not only dab his glistening eyes, but also wave SBF off in a departure practically perspiring with all the sweet sorrow of a melancholic scene from Brief Encounter.
Unfortunately, it was two hours and 28 minutes for me, simply to ensure I genuinely hadn’t just heard a lot of nothing the first time around.
That’s not to say there weren’t some interesting questions occasionally punctuating the stretched-out playbook of pity.
Asked if he thought there would be some criminal liability, he returned to a now familiar robotic response.
“I think the real answer is that’s not what I’m focusing on. There’s going to be a time and a place when I think about my own future, but the time isn’t now,” he said.
“What matters here are millions of customers. All the stakeholders in FTX who got hurt and trying to help them out. What happens to me isn’t the important bit right now.”
What does the future hold?
“I don’t know what my future is, when you fast-forward, I don’t know what I’m going to be doing a long time from now. In the near future, I don’t know. I want to be helpful wherever I can to regulators and customers.”
How much money have you got left?
“Pretty much nothing. I have one working credit card with about a hundred thousand dollars.”
Were you truthful?
“I was as truthful as I’m knowledgeable to be.”
Quite what, in the name of Sigmund Freud’s sock drawer, that unchecked answer means is anyone’s guess.
Did you lie?
“I don’t know of times when I’ve lied. There were certainly times when I was acting as a marketer for FTX when I had to paint FTX in a way to make it compelling and exciting.”
Curious.
With a web of lies spun all around him, Sam Bankman-Fried plays the role of an almost pitiful spider attempting to apologise to flies, begging them to appreciate that he’s grossly misunderstood as he picks his teeth with a recently-dispatched bluebottle’s leg.
There is, of course, another way of looking at this dire situation. In fact, there is a growing army of people who want the world to go easy on SBF. After all, he’s just a boy who has made some bad decisions and is trying to own his mistake.
The brutal truth is that he isn’t just a boy. He’s nearly 32 years old! And no one in the world can possibly own an $8 billion mistake, let alone fix it.
If anything was gained or learned from this interview, it was the sad and daunting realisation that any possibility of prosecution or conviction isn’t even in view yet. Bankman-Fried’s continued eagerness – faked or not – to be helpful and provide all possible assistance is going to drag this out for a long time to come.
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