There are seldom times when the entire crypto community comes together on any matter but one of these rare occurrences has taken place this week. It comes hot on the heels of the FTX collapse and an article from the New York Times following an interview with the now ex-CEO of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). Not long after the article was published, participants in the space have taken to social media to air their displeasure with it.
NYT Article Sparks Backlash
When crypto exchange FTX had inevitably collapsed following the bank run, New York Times had gotten SBF to sit down for an interview. The interview was one hour long and the resulting article was published not long after. However, the article would do nothing but attract the ire of the crypto community.
The most basic of the complaints about the NYT article was the fact that it did not touch on what SBF and FTX had actually done. By the time of the article, it was already clear that billions of dollars were already lost as users were no longer able to withdraw funds.
According to the complaints, they wanted the publication to address important issues and ask hard-hitting questions too. These include that SBF did not inform the public that he was sending user funds to Alameda Research or that he actually had a way to access those funds in the first place. Rather, the article seems to focus on SBF and how he was doing, and not actually what he had done to the users of the crypto exchange.
Word count NYT's puff piece on SBF:
"Fraud": 0
"Enron": 0
"Crime": 0
"Illiquid": 0
"Stolen": 0
"Hidden": 0
"Criminal": 0
"Back door": 0
"He's getting sleep": 1 pic.twitter.com/htbte8IyPI— Trung Phan (@TrungTPhan) November 15, 2022
Various important people such as Elon Musk and Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson also took to Twitter to actually slam the New York Times for the article. Musk called it a “puff piece” while Hoskinson alluded to the fact that the media was not holding SBF accountable because he had donated money to various political campaigns.
Guys it might be a good idea to donate some money to certain politicians. It seems that you can get away with anything and have zero media accountability. https://t.co/62mQpwW0Oz
— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) November 15, 2022
SBF Digs Larger Crypto Hole
From the initial bank run-up to the time of the bankruptcy filing, there have been various developments that suggest that the impact of the collapse was wider than expected. This has been seen with the expected hole going from around $2 billion to an estimated $10 billion at this time with the bankruptcy filing showing that there may be more than 1 million FTX creditors. But this is not the only thing that bothers users about the platform.
Total market cap at $791 billion | Source: Crypto Total Market Cap on TradingView.com
SBF’s behavior during this time has also been what some in the space have classified as “shady.” Apparently, the ex-CEO’s recent thread that was filled with single-letter tweets was to hide the fact that he was actually deleting tweets and using them to keep up his tweet count.
What SBF and FTX have done and the fact that there are reports of misusing user funds puts what they did right in the criminal territory. There are now multiple investigations being carried out into the crypto exchange while users with stuck funds await conclusions.
Featured image from Watcher Guru, chart from TradingView.com
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