Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary and billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman have come under fire for saying they believe Sam Bankman-Fried ( SBF ) “didn’t knowingly mix the funds.” The former CEO of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX also said he “didn’t run Alameda,” so he “didn’t know exactly what was going on.”
Kevin O’Leary, Bill Ackman defends Sam Bankman-Fried
Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary, aka Mr. Wonderful, and billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman were criticized Thursday after they believed former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was telling the truth during an interview with The New York Times. ‘ Dealbook Summit, aired on Tuesday. On November 11, the cryptocurrency exchange FTX collapsed and declared bankruptcy. An estimated one million customers and investors lost billions of dollars in the stock market crash.
Bankman-Fried said in an interview that she “did not knowingly commingle the funds.” He also laid the blame on Alameda Research, saying, “I wasn’t running Alameda … I didn’t know exactly what was going on.”
While most people in the cryptocurrency community don’t believe Bankman-Fried’s story, at least two prominent people have spoken out in favor of the former FTX CEO. Ackman, CEO and portfolio manager at Pershing Square Capital Management, tweeted after the interview: “Call me crazy, but I think SBF is telling the truth.”
O’Leary quickly agreed, tweeting that he lost millions as an investor in FTX and was sandblasted as a paid spokesperson for the crypto exchange. However, after listening to the interview, he emphasized that he agreed with Akman “about the child”.
Many people disagreed with O’Leary and Ackman. Some called them “fools”, “idiots” and “swindlers”. One of them wrote: “I’m a little confused that people look at SBF as a really smart kid who’s screwed up. He is almost 31 years old, which means he is a grown man. This isn’t a 23-year-old fresh graduate making a trading mistake on the table. The story around this story shouldn’t really be that.”
“I imagine if I were the public spokesperson for what turned out to be a Ponzi scheme, I’d probably hope that the leader would leave without criminal charges as well (I would be less likely to be charged). Just saying, look at the incentives,” commented another.
A third said, “I think I get it now. All these statements are a form of legal protection and this interview has been carefully prepared. Better to be a spokesperson for a failed business than a massive scam. It is obvious that the latter is true. A fourth said: “You’ve given millions to a fraudster who doesn’t know the first thing about running a stock market or hedge fund or how to protect investors’ assets, and who probably ran off with your money due to complete incompetence, but who you’re convinced is innocent.”
After the collapse of FTX, O’Leary said he would support Bankman-Fried again if he had another venture, noting that SBF is one of the best traders in the cryptocurrency space. Mr. Wonderful also recently announced that he and Bankman-Fried raised nearly $8 billion to save FTX from collapse.
What do you think of Kevin O’Leary and Bill Ackman’s belief that the SBF didn’t know what it was doing when it pooled the funds? Let us know in the comment section below.
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