FTX ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried says he wants to start a new business

Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced former boss of the failed crypto-exchange FTX, said this week he hopes to start a new business to recoup his investors’ losses in the firm’s collapse. 

The 30-year-old told the BBC in an interview published Saturday he would “give anything” to start a new venture. 

“I’m going to be thinking about how we can help the world and if users haven’t gotten much back, I’m going to be thinking about what I can do for them,” he said. “And I think at the very least, I have a duty to FTX users to do right by them as best as I can.” 

Ask if was prepared for the possibility of arrest, Bankman-Fried said: “There’s some time at night ruminating, yes, but when I get up during the day, I try and focus, be as productive as I can and ignore things that are out of my control.” 

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FTX failed last month in what was essentially a cryptocurrency version of a bank run, when customers tried to withdraw their assets all at once because of growing doubts about the financial strength of the company and its affiliated trading arm, Alameda Research. 

Since its collapse, FTX’s new management has called the cryptocurrency exchange’s management a “complete failure of corporate controls.”

Bankman-Fried has said that he takes responsibility for the collapse and that he failed to grasp the amount of risk Bermuda-based FTX and Alameda were taking on across both businesses. 

One of the accusations made against Bankman-Fried is that he arranged for Alameda to use customers’ assets in FTX to place bets in the market. Bankman-Fried has said in public interviews that he did not “knowingly” co-mingle customers’ assets with Alameda.

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Bankman-Fried said in a tweet Friday that he is willing to testify to Congress next week, but that he will be limited in what he can say and that he “won’t be as helpful” as he’d like to be. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.