Sam Bankman-Fried Says Alameda Winding Down, Promises FTX US Customers 'Fine'

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried promised to use “every penny” his crypto exchange has to repay users ahead of investors, apologizing for his “fuck up” in a tweet thread Thursday.

The 30-year-old former billionaire also said Alameda Trading – his empire’s once mighty crypto quant shop and market maker – would "wind down trading."

Bankman-Fried also shut down rumors that Alameda was attempting to short - and possibly destabilize - Tether, the largest stablecoin by market capitalization. On Thursday morning, the price of Tether traded down to 97 cents, and even as low as 93 cents on the crypto exchange Kraken.

He also promised the users of FTX.US that their funds were "fine," echoing a claim he made about FTX immediately before revealing that it was not, in fact, fine.

Alameda came under scrutiny last week after CoinDesk published a balance sheet suggesting it had heavy holdings of the FTT token – an exchange token issued by FTX, Alameda’s sister company also founded by Bankman-Fried.

While the CEO assured customers that his company was fine, repeatedly saying on Twitter that he had no solvency issues, on Tuesday he revealed that he was facing a liquidity concern and had come to an agreement with Binance to acquire FTX. This deal fell apart a day later.

On Thursday Bankman-Fried suggested FTX might still survive, saying “There are a number of players who we are in talks with, LOIs, term sheets, etc.”

“We'll see how that ends up,” he added.

This is a developing story and will be updated.