“How did this dude steal billions of dollars and is now speaking at a summit as a free man? Make it make sense.”
That was Twitter user @WSBChairman responding to a late Wednesday tweet by disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, who confirmed that he will participate in the New York Times’ DealBook Summit in November, where he will be interviewed by journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin.
“Scam man. I lost everything because of you,” anotherTwitter user @Alexand56464660 replied to SBF.
In a separate tweet, Sorkin said “nothing is off limits,” when it comes to interviewing SBF. “There are a lot of important questions to be asked and answered,” said the journalist.
The furious responses triggered by tweets from both SBF and Sorkin — who also got suggestions on questions to ask — were just a taste of the boiling rage from the investment world that the former CEO who is accused of mismanaging billions of dollars would appear at the prestigious DealBook gathering of high level executives, business and cultural leaders.
The 29-year old will be appearing alongside Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock BLK, +0.39%, Reed Hastings, Netflix founder and CEO NFLX, +1.68%, Andy Jassy, Amazon.com’s AMZN, +1.00% president and CEO, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, to name a few.
Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz is among those echoing that “why is he not in jail?” question, given his firm doesn’t expect to recover some $ 77 million in cash and digital assets it had in FTX when the whole enterprise fell apart. “I think his day will come,” he said Wednesday in an interview.
SBF has been accused of treating FTX as a ‘personal fiefdom’, in addition to potentially sparking more fallout, with Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao saying telling Bloomberg on Thursday that he expects to see “a little bit of contagion.” Crypto trading firm Genesis has also been at the center of bankruptcy worries recently.
Genesis meltdown: Why investors are worried about bigger problems for crypto
But those hoping to come face to face with SBF may be out of luck as a spokesman for the New York Times told MarketWatch that he is expected to be “participating in the interview from the Bahamas.”