“‘I think there’s a very open and shut case for fraud’”
That was Coinbase
COIN,
CEO and founder Brian Armstrong talking about former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried at the a16z crypto Founder Summit last week.
“I think we were all pretty shocked to see the scope of the fraud that happened at FTX,” Armstrong said. “And let’s call it a fraud. We have to call it what it actually is.”
FTX collapsed and later filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after struggling with liquidity issues in November. Bankman-Fried has been criticized by many people over his role in FTX’s collapse and has admitted he “misaccounted” $8 billion in FTX funds.
The Coinbase CEO added that he believes Bankman-Fried had a major part in FTX’s collapse, even saying, “frankly it’s baffling to me why he’s not in custody already.”
See also: Tom Brady, Steph Curry and Kevin O’Leary set to lose big from FTX bankruptcy filing
MarketWatch’s Lukas Alpert detailed the legal challenges that Bankman-Fried is facing here.
Bankman-Fried lost billions in net worth over FTX’s bankruptcy, and apologized by tweeting, “I’m really sorry, again, that we ended up here.”
The House Financial Services Committee plans to conduct a hearing surrounding the situation with FTX, and it “expects” to hear from Sam Bankman-Fried. The crypto founder says he is willing to testify in front of Congress, but is not ready to yet.
Prices for bitcoin
BTCUSD,
and ether
ETHUSD,
are down more than 65% over the past year as a crypto winter has continued to take shape. The total market cap for all crypto nearly hit $3 trillion during parts of 2021, but is now around $850 billion.
Read on: Chamath Palihapitiya slams media for not uncovering FTX problems ahead of collapse