There's a lot in the news about cryptocurrency right now, not least of all thanks to President Donald Trump's recent announcement of a cryptocurrency reserve. The President of the United States wants to create a sort of digital Fort Knox and hopes to avoid pushing the costs onto the taxpayer by filling it with seized crypto assets that were claimed by the Treasury Department.
A fact sheet explaining how it all works clearly states it will be funded by "bitcoin owned by the Department of Treasury that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings."
While this is bad news for the likes of Silk Road's Ross Ulbricht and FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, the latter seems to have come to terms with the fact he was likely never going to see his fortune again.
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Discussing all things crypto with Tucker Carlson, Bankman-Fried (known as the 'Crypto King') said how he thinks the Trump administration will be good for crypto and will manage to cut some of the red tape the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission put up during Biden's time.
SBF founded the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, and as well as being crypto's 'poster boy', he was once ranked 41st on the richest Americans in the Forbes 400. Speaking to Carlson, Bankman-Fried admitted those days are long gone, with Carlson asking, "Do you have any money left?"
A pretty upbeat Bankman-Fried explained: "Well, basically no."
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Saying that if nothing had intervened, FTX would have about $15 billion liabilities and $93 billion of assets in 2025.
Of course, it didn't work out that way, with Bankman-Fried continuing: "So the answer should be in theory, yes. There was enough money to pay every[one] back in kind at the time, or stay, with plenty of interest left over and tens of billions left for investors. But that's not how things worked out."
He went on to say: "The assets were dissipated incredibly quickly by those controlling it. They siphoned off tens of billions of dollars worth, and it's been a colossal disaster."
A mournful Bankman-Fried concluded: "I mean, not stopping that from happening is by far the biggest regret of my life."
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Back in January 2022, a $400 million round of funding saw FTX rise to a value of $32 billion, which had skyrocketed from an October 2021 valuation of just $25 billion.
Rivaling the likes of Coinbase and Binance, the Bahamas-based FTX quickly became one of the largest digital currency exchanges. In November 2022, a spike in customer withdrawals highlighted a $8 billion crater in FTX's accounts and marked the beginning of the end.
It was triggered by a November 2 CoinDesk article that claimed the Alameda Research trading firm (owned by Bankman-Fried) held a large amount of FTX's FTT exchange token. Bankman-Fried was arrested in December 2022, extradited to the USA, and eventually convicted on all seven counts of fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering during United States v. Bankman-Fried.
While he’s just celebrated his 33rd birthday in prison, it looks like Bankman-Fried is going to have to settle in for a fair few more behind bars.