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Sam Bankman-Fried outside the New York courthouse
Photo: Peter Foley/EPA
Sam Bankman-Fried continues to deny any blame for the collapse of his cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
"I haven't stolen any funds, much less scavenged billions," he wrote in a blog post.
It is unusual for suspects to speak out publicly in criminal proceedings.
Lawyers routinely keep their clients silent so their statements cannot be used against them in court.
Bankman-Fried faces charges of fraud in a New York court.
According to insiders, he secretly transferred $10 billion in FTX client funds to his crypto broker Alameda for speculation.
The 30-year-old pleaded "not guilty" at a first hearing.
Two top executives, however, pleaded guilty.
In the blog post, the FTX founder did not directly address most of the allegations made by US authorities.
However, he acknowledged that Alameda did not hedge against the "extreme" crash in the cryptocurrency markets.
In 2022, Bitcoin posted its second-biggest annual loss since its launch in 2008, down 65 percent. For the second most important cyber currency, Ethereum, it was the blackest year on the stock exchange.
Here the minus added up to more than 67 percent.
Bankman-Fried explained that Alameda's bankruptcy swept FTX International away because the brokerage house could not provide security for transactions on the exchange.
However, the US division of FTX is “fully solvent”, while FTX International has billions in assets.
"If there is a restart, I think there is a real chance that customers can be compensated to a significant extent." According to a lawyer for the crypto exchange, five billion dollars in cash, cryptocurrencies and securities have been seized so far.
ssu/Reuters