Behind FTX's Downfall: A Battle of The Billionaires And A Failed Bid To Save Crypto
NDTV
News of the liquidity crunch at FTX - valued in January at $32 billion with investors including SoftBank and BlackRock - sent reverberations through the crypto world.
On Tuesday morning, Sam Bankman-Fried, owner of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, caught his employees off-guard with a somber message.
"I'm sorry," he told them. "I f**ked up."
The reason for the mea culpa: His announcement half an hour earlier that FTX's arch-rival, Binance, planned to mount a shock takeover of its main trading platform to save it from a "liquidity crunch." Binance founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao, whom the billionaire had accused of sabotage, would now be his White Knight.
The seeds of FTX's downfall were sown months earlier, stemming from mistakes Bankman-Fried made after he stepped in to save other crypto firms as the crypto market collapsed amid rising interest rates, according to interviews with several people close to Bankman-Fried and communications from both companies that have not been previously reported.
