Crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried blames himself for FTX’s collapse, admits he ‘f—ed up’

FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried tweeted Thursday morning that he is “sorry,” admitting that he “f—ed up” and “should have done better.” The post comes as the one-time hero of the crypto sector is begging for billions of dollars to stave off bankruptcy.

It has been a swift fall from grace for FTX this week. Earlier this year, the exchange was valued at $32 billion, but now, Bankman-Fried is again looking for someone to backstop FTX after rival exchange Binance pulled out of a deal to acquire it.

“I also should have been communicating more very recently,” wrote Bankman-Fried. “Transparently–my hands were tied during the duration of the possible Binance deal; I wasn’t particularly allowed to say much publicly. But of course it’s on me that we ended up there in the first place.”

The FTX CEO also provided the latest on where things stand with his beleaguered crypto exchange.

Excluding its U.S. business, Bankman-Fried says that its international operation has a total market value of assets and collateral that is higher than client deposits, but he says that is “different from liquidity for delivery–as you can tell from the state of withdrawals.”

“The full story here is one every detail of, but as a very high level, I f—ed up twice,” wrote Bankman-Fried.

The FTX CEO says his first mistake was poor internal labeling of bank-related accounts, which meant that he was “substantially off” on his sense of users’ margin. “I thought it was way lower.”

On Sunday, he says the exchange saw roughly $5 billion of withdrawals, which he called “the largest by a huge margin.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.