Owner of the bitcoin exchange FTX Sam Bankman-Fried surprised his staff on Tuesday morning with a depressing letter.He apologised and admitted that he had made a mistake.
The reason for the apology: He made his announcement 30 minutes before FTX’s fiercest competitor, Binance, prepared to launch a surprise takeover of its primary trading platform to prevent a “liquidity bottleneck.” The billionaire had accused Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, creator of Binance, of sabotage; now he would be his White Knight.
According to interviews with several people close to Bankman-Fried and previously undisclosed communications from both companies, the seeds of FTX’s demise were planted months earlier as a result of errors Bankman-Fried made after he intervened to save other crypto firms as the crypto market crashed amid rising interest rates.
