Cryptocurrency

Solana

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 <p class="paragraph">FTX Exchange and Alameda Research <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" title="founder" href="https://thebittimes.com/tag/founder.html">founder</a> — Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) — spoke for the first time as a witness in his criminal fraud trial on October 27. Among the revelations, Bankman-Fried admitted he “knew nothing” about <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" title="crypto" href="https://thebittimes.com/tag/crypto.html">crypto</a>currencies when he <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" title="started" href="https://thebittimes.com/tag/started.html">started</a> Alameda in 2017.</p>
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 <p class="paragraph">SBF’s testimony was covered live by <em>CNN</em> <em>Business</em> for approximately seven hours. According to the coverage, Sam knew “basically nothing” about crypto when he decided to found Alameda Research in 2017.</p>
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  <p class="paragraph">“I had absolutely no idea how they worked…I just knew they were things you could trade. There was a ton of excitement, a ton of demand…”</p> <cite>— Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF)</cite>
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 <p class="paragraph">Notably, FTX just came two years later, in 2019, with the main goal of creating a more trading-friendly platform that could be offered for sale to Binance.&nbsp;His plans changed when the number of customers <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" title="started" href="https://thebittimes.com/tag/started.html">started</a> to increase.</p>
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  <p class="paragraph">“I thought there was maybe a 20% chance of success and an 80% chance it would shut down after a few months. Even that 20% chance was a huge opportunity, given that the biggest exchanges at the time were multibillion-dollar companies.”</p> <cite>— Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF)</cite>
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 <h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-hedging-sbf-was-worried-about-alameda-s-management-team-skills">Hedging: SBF was worried about Alameda’s management team skills</h2>
 <p class="paragraph">Interestingly, Bankman-Fried wrote a memo two months before Alameda Research’s collapse, suggesting it should shut down operations due to “serious risks” for the company.</p>
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  <p class="paragraph">“Alameda might be roughly insolvent. (…) I was worried Alameda might go bankrupt.”</p> <cite>— Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF)</cite>
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 <p class="paragraph">During his testimony, the founder recalled he was worried about the lack of hedging strategies by Alameda’s CEO, Caroline Ellison, in case of a market crash. Caroline had previously mentioned how Sam was “freaking out about hedging” back then as if he was worrying too much about something irrelevant.</p>
 <p class="paragraph">Curiously, when asked about his personal style, the FTX <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" title="founder" href="https://thebittimes.com/tag/founder.html">founder</a> explained he was “kind of busy and lazy.”</p>
 <p class="paragraph">SBF will be again in front of the jurors on October 30 to continue his testimony.</p>
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<p>Source: <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://thebittimes.com/ftx-founder-knew-basically-nothing-about-crypto-when-started-his-business-tbt68209.html">https://thebittimes.com/ftx-founder-knew-basically-nothing-about-crypto-when-started-his-business-tbt68209.html</a></p>

FTX founder knew ‘basically nothing’ about crypto when started his business

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