Sam Bankman-Fried Digs Himself A Hole As This FTX Execs’ Text Thread Is Exposed In Court

The trial of the former CEO of the defunct crypto exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), resumed on October 30 with the continuation of the defendant’s direct examination by his primary counsel, Mark Cohen.

This time, he and his lawyers seemed solely focused on changing the narrative that had already been put forward by the prosecution, including certain correspondences between Bankman-Fried and FTX’s former Director of Engineering Nishad Singh.

FTX Founder Says Messages To Singh Were Misunderstood

According to a report by Fortune, Bankman-Fried stated that Singh misinterpreted the text exchanges between them just before FTX filed for bankruptcy. In one of the exchanges, Singh had asked SBF if he was fine with him performing some backdated trades in order to get rid of his debts, as “one thing” that could help him was being debt-free.

Following Singh’s message, Bankman-Fried replied, “I think that’s probably fine.” However, while on the stand, the defendant clarified that he “wasn’t sure exactly what he [Singh] intended” and that his response about the backdated trade being “probably fine” was just said to alleviate Singh’s grief and as a show of support to his former associate. 

Singh had earlier mentioned while giving his testimony as a prosecution witness, how he was suicidal in the days leading up to FTX filing for bankruptcy. Bankman-Fried noted that he was aware of this fact and that they had a therapist on call for him. Therefore, he was trying to avoid doing more harm to Singh’s fragile state when that text exchange occurred.

SBF’s primary counsel, Mark Cohen, also highlighted another exhibit that involved another text exchange been the defendant and Singh. In that one, Singh was putting forward the possibility of Bankman-Fried taking a large part of the blame for FTX’s collapse in a bid to restore employees’ faith in the company. 

The defendant seemed to have answered in the affirmative to Singh’s request. However, while giving his testimony, he explained that his affirmative response wasn’t directed at his role in FTX’s collapse but simply him agreeing that FTX employees may be more inclined to work with Singh if they believed that the FTX engineer didn’t play any part in the crisis that FTX was facing. 

Sam Bankman-Fried Puts The Blame On Former Associate

While delivering their opening statement, SBF’s lawyers had hinted that Alameda Reserach’s ex-CEO Caroline Ellison played a role in the trading firm and FTX’s collapse as she didn’t hedge against crypto prices when they began to decline. To bolster this line of argument, the defendant confirmed that he had discussions about hedging with Ellison and former co-CEO of Alameda Sam Trabucco. 

He further went on to highlight the fact that Ellison didn’t seem to heed his advice in the beginning, as she once admitted her wrongdoing to him and agreed that Alameda should have hedged. Following this event, Ellison allegedly offered to step down, but SBF told her it was her decision to make. 

Bankman-Fried then recounted a time in September 2022 when he asked her again about hedging and at what scale. He stated that he was impressed with the figures but felt that they could be bigger. Basically, the defendant was suggesting that Ellison could have done better in terms of hedging and left the door open for one to assume that maybe her negligence contributed to the company’s collapse. 

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