- The FTX founder admitted that he made a mistake in confronting the Binance CEO: “It was not a good strategic move on my part.”
- The fight between the two heated up after Bankman stated that it would be good to regulate cryptocurrencies, something that CZ strongly opposed.
- The peak of the crisis came when CZ confirmed that he would sell all of his holdings of FTX’s token, FTT, causing the exchange to collapse due to illiquidity.
After the collapse of his exchange and the loss of confidence of many investors in the industry, Sam Bankman-Fried regretted the fight he had with the CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao: “It was not a good strategic move on my part,” he admitted. in an interview with the New York Times.
The relationship between the two started in 2019 when Binance invested in FTX, Bankman’s exchange. Everything was going well until the young entrepreneur opined that cryptocurrency regulation would be a good thing, a comment that Zhao strongly criticized.
According to the Times, Bankman-Fried used his growing influence in Washington to criticize Zhao in private meetings. “I was pretty frustrated by a lot of what I saw going on, but I should have understood that it wasn’t a good decision for me to express that,” Bankman-Fried recently confirmed.
After several disputes, the turning point of the fight between the two millionaires occurred when the CEO of Binance announced that he would sell all of his exchange holdings of FTT, the FTX token.
“We support before, but we will not pretend to make love after the divorce…we will not support people who lobby other industry players behind their backs”
Cz on Twitter.
The sale of the mighty Binance rocked the market. As a consequence, investors went into panic selling of FTT, causing a multi-billion dollar liquidity crisis at FTX.
While Binance initially agreed to save FTX, CZ later put out a statement that it would not do so due to the lack of transparency it saw in the papers.
“I shouldn’t throw stones in a glass house, so I’ll hold back a bit. Except to say: they probably never really planned to go through with the deal.”
Bankman-Fried.
Ultimately FTX failed to come up with the money to save the exchange and filed for bankruptcy last Friday. Now, the Bankman faces a series of investigations by regulators, accused of misusing his clients’ funds.
