Billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya Calls FTX Implosion a Sophisticated Con Perpetrated on Millions of People

Billionaire venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya says collapsed crypto exchange FTX was an “enormous financial fraud” that impacted tens of millions of people.

In a new interview on the All-In Podcast, Palihapitiya says disgraced former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is manipulating the media for a second time with his ongoing “apology tour.”

“[Bankman-Fried] went to the perfect elite private high school. Then, he went to one of the most prestigious elite private universities. His parents teach governance of all things at one of the most elite liberal institutions in America. They are in the establishment of the progressive left.

And what happened was, he took customer funds and all of this money, he made tens of millions of dollars of political donations, he wrapped himself in this blanket of a progressive, left-leaning cause called ‘effective altruism’ and all of the mainstream media fell for it and embraced him, as well as some politicians, because it met everything that they themselves also bought into. 

And now you have this cataclysmic event, a multi-deca-billion dollar fraud or bankruptcy, millions of customer accounts that are frozen. Tens of millions to hundreds of millions to billions of dollars lost and stolen from them, and they refuse to re-underwrite this kid, and the reason is because, in order to do, it’s like eating your own tail.”

Palihapitiya says Bankman-Fried architected a “sophisticated con” that didn’t face any pressure from reporters or regulators. The billionaire attributes that lack of pressure to Bankman-Fried saying “all of the right things.”

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