Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of crypto exchange FTX.
Lam Yik/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Sam Bankman-Fried claims he paid little attention to his company expenses, per Bloomberg.
The FTX co-founder told Bloomberg he didn’t realize he was spending more than he was taking in.
Authorities in the US and the Bahamas are investigating FTX’s collapse.
Sam Bankman-Fried said he paid so little attention to his company expenses that he didn’t realize he was spending more than he was taking in.
The FTX founder told Bloomberg that the billions of dollars customers wired to Alameda Research, a trading firm and FTX’s sister company, were gone because the companies were spending more than they made.
The disgraced crypto boss is facing investigations in the US and the Bahamas after he was accused of misusing customer funds to prop up Alameda Research.
When demonstrating the company’s biggest cashflows to the Bloomberg journalist, Bankman-Fried listed $250 million in expenses for real estate and $1 billion for “fuckups.” His largest expense was listed as a net payment of $2.5 billion to rival Binance to buy out the company’s investment in FTX.
After putting the company expenses into a spreadsheet, Bankman-Fried created a column of much lower numbers to demonstrate how much he thought he was spending at the time, per Bloomberg.
According to court documents filed by FTX’s newly appointed CEO John J. Ray III, the company didn’t have a formal accounting department.
Company expenses, which reportedly included a $200 daily allowance for food delivery, were approved by emojis on online chats, according to a bankruptcy filing.
Representatives for FTX did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment made outside of normal working hours.