Daily Authority: 😮 FTX CEO tells all

☔ Happy Friday! Today is one of the dozen or so rainy days we get a year here in Andalucia. I guess I’ll try to enjoy it!

Sam Bankman-Fried spills the beans

If you’ve been following anything about the crypto world, you’ve heard about the spectacular collapse of the crypto exchange FTX, which filed for bankruptcy earlier this week. The former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, was a major crypto celebrity and spokesperson, but his reputation was transformed into yet another crypto hype scammer overnight. To get his perspective on it, Vox managed to get ahold of SBF on Twitter, with some interesting reveals.

• First of all, it’s highly irregular for someone under federal investigation to talk to reporters, but here we are. Welcome to crypto.
• SBF is obviously used to talking to reporters, and he remained remarkably candid.
• Although he had previously pushed for better crypto regulation, he revealed that that was mostly for PR.
• Essentially, he doesn’t think regulators are capable of protecting consumers, either in crypto or the traditional financial world.
• In his words, “f**k regulators.”

Ethics shmethics

• A big part of SBF’s image was tied to the ethical use of money, but now he admits that it was largely PR.
• His goal was to build up his own reputation in order to help legitimize his business, which, to be fair, was largely successful.
• Until it wasn’t.
• Again, in his own words, he called it “this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shiboleths (sic) and so everyone likes us.”
• He does, at least, feel bad for all of the people who lost their money. All $8 billion of it.

On what happened

• As for how his companies FTX and Alameda Research lost all the money, he said, “sometimes life creeps up on you.”
• He claims he thought Alameda had enough collateral to cover the money it borrowed (and hedged, and lost) from FTX.
• He also says that he didn’t realize the extent of the company’s messy accounting “until a few weeks ago.”
• This is the subject of ongoing litigation, so we’ll all find out exactly what happened soon.

What’s next?

• SBF admits that he made some huge mistakes. A lot of huge mistakes.
• But his biggest regret is filing for bankruptcy.
• Why? Well, he prides himself on his ability to fundraise, and he still seems to think he can raise the $8 billion his company owes in the next two weeks.
• He has been successful here in the past, of course, but the actual amount of money he managed to raise in the years before the collapse was closer to 1.9 billion, as per a report in the Wall Street Journal.
• In other words, don’t hold your breath if FTX owes you money.
• If you’re thinking of getting into crypto or just learning about how it all works, we have a guide for that. You can also find out everything you need to know about cryptocurrency wallets, absorb our glossary of common cryptocurrency terms, or check out our pick of the best crypto wallets for Android.

Roundup

👹 One of the best gaming phones, the ROG Phone 6, is now getting a Diablo Immortal edition complete with accessories and more (Android Authority).

🤔 Love foldables? Here’s a look at what could’ve been with Xiaomi’s outward folding prototype (Android Authority).

📱 The polls are in: You’d resurrect this dead smartphone brand. Hint, it starts with a B (Android Authority).

🐤 It just keeps getting worse: Twitter closes offices until Monday as employees quit in droves (CBC News).

🔋 On the back of the EU’s decision to standardize USB-C, the world’s second-biggest smartphone market is following suit (Android Authority).

📩 WHOOPsies: Cable company’s accidental email to rival discusses plan to block competition (Arstechnica).

🥳 The party’s over: AirBnB is releasing ID verification and anti-party tech early next year (PCMag).

🎟️ Ticketmaster crashed yesterday after 14 million people tried to buy Taylor Swift tickets — ten times the expected amount (Business Insider).

📖 Thanks, TikTok: Feds arrest Russians accused of running the largest pirated e-book library (Arstechnica).

🙅 SBF can’t hold a candle to these folks: “Who had the biggest fall from grace in history?” (r/askreddit).

Friday Fun

Earlier this week Lego announced its tallest set ever: The Eiffel Tower. Coming in at five feet tall and 10,001 pieces, this bad boy is a pièce de résistance. It’s not quite the largest set (by brick count) that the company has ever released, with the Lego World Map taking that crown, but it sure is close. The set will go on sale on November 25 and costs $629.99, which is still a fraction of the cost of a real trip to Paris. And that doesn’t come with more than 10,000 tiny grey pieces!

Au revoir 🥐,

Nick Fernandez, Editor.