With about two weeks to go until the start of Sam Bankman-Fried’s trial, yet another trove of documents replete with everything from his early life to unverifiable attempts at exonerating himself has surfaced.
Lots of Words, Little Substance
Sticking to the tone of his lengthy – yet ultimately trite – substack posts and interactions with United States House Representatives, SBF sent 15,000 words – formatted as an intended series of tweets spanning about 70 pages – worth of attempted explanations for the collapse of FTX to Tiffany Fong, who in turn made them available to the New York Times. For now, the exposé itself has not been made available to the public.
In turn, the document contains links to 29 other ones (sometimes vaguely) related to the FTX group. For instance, one link leads to a spreadsheet detailing SBF’s Amazon purchases. Packages which, as a brief reminder, were sent via chartered private jet.
thank you for not digging up old bikini photos @nytimes 😅 pic.twitter.com/YHtM533DNV
— Tiffany Fong (@TiffanyFong_) September 15, 2023
Tiffany Fong, who originally became known in the crypto world for leaking private meetings and statements sourced from a disgruntled Celsius insider, caught SBF’s attention by doing so. When the FTX Empire collapsed, she reached out – and surprisingly got a lengthier response than anyone else.
“I genuinely was not expecting a response. Most people in Sam’s shoes do NOT talk. That’s the smart thing to do. Plus, I figured every major publication likely wanted to interview Sam, so if he were to talk to anyone, it certainly wouldn’t be me.”
The interview was later made part of the mountain of evidence of SBF’s misdeeds.
Lawyers, Ellison, and Trabucco Are to Blame, Says SBF
SBF’s attempt at a manifesto begins with a recollection of his childhood, interspersed with links to cheesy pop music videos.
According to SBF, the devilish Trabucco, who used to sneak out past curfew to bake cheesecake brownies at the math camp where they met, grew up to be an aloof “quiet quitter” who, although he had good risk management skills, did not get along with Ellison and preferred to go sailing, usually with his dates.
One has to wonder if said risk management skills are what prompted Trabucco to leave Alameda months before the collapse and kept him safe from any accusations of wrongdoing.
As far as Ellison is concerned, SBF paints her as an amateur who would cry during meetings and refuse to implement “trading strategies that would have protected his businesses from a market crash.”
Naturally, the law firm taking care of the FTX bankruptcy case was also accused of wrongdoing – such as daring to insinuate that SBF was actually at fault for the misuse of customer funds.
The document continues with a brief musing on why all his relationships failed, followed by an irreverent interlude in which CZ is named as well. According to SBF, a conference in Taiwan led to CZ being distracted from his date by none other than SBF himself.
“Tonight was a night about booze and women and lasers and loud, booming music, but there was an odd microclimate that seemed to follow me. I walked by CZ a few more times, and each time, he broke eye contact with his eye candy and embraced me: People were thinking about us a lot.”
Although nearly none of the contents of the 70-page diatribe is independently verifiable – and even less of it is remotely believable – the manifesto will, at least, probably give the jury a pause for mirth during SBF’s complex trial, which will begin on the 2nd of October.
