The CEO of FTX apologized to investors but stated: “I mixed funds without knowing it”

“I never tried to commit fraud,” Bankman-Fried said in the NYT interview.

The liquidity crisis at FTX came after Bankman-Fried secretly moved $10 billion of client funds from FTX to Alameda Research, according to Reuters.

Bankman-Fried told Reuters in November that the company did notor “secretly transferred”but instead got its “confusing internal labeling” wrong.

“I unknowingly mixed funds. I was frankly surprised at how large Alameda’s position was, which points to another oversight failure on my part and not appointing someone to primarily handle it.“, has stated in the Bankman-Fried interview.

The FTX crash continues to make a dent in the cryptocurrency sector, whose image was already damaged after other bankruptcies of crypto platforms last May.

Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency in the world, has plummeted in 1 year from the highs of $69,000 to the current $17,000. Ethereum, the world’s second largest crypto, has also suffered heavy losses.

In fact, much of the liquidity crunch is believed to have been due to Alameda using customer funds to cover loans that were being withdrawn due to the credit crunch caused by the LUNA collapse, Cointelegraph notes.

At the beginning of this year, the offshore stock exchange and Bankman-Fried’s US subsidiary had a combined valuation of $40 billion, according to Crunchbase data echoed by Yahoo Finance.

By the end of the first quarter, Bankman-Fried’s personal wealth had risen to more than $25 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Less than 7 months later, Bankman-Fried declared FTX bankruptcy and resigned as CEO. It is estimated that FTX and affiliated companies owe about $8 billion to more than one million customers.