'I don't think I was a criminal,' says convicted felon Sam Bankman-Fried from prison

Sam Bankman-Fried appears to have a tough time staying away from the press.

In his second interview from prison — first in front of a camera — the FTX founder repeated many of the talking points from his first “media blitz” immediately following the collapse of the ill-fated crypto exchange — including the idea that one of crypto’s largest fraud cases isn’t so.

“I don't think I was a criminal,” Bankman-Fried said, responding to a line of questions about crime in crypto from conservative pundit Tucker Carlson. “I mean, I think the DOJ thinks that I may have been, but I don’t care.” 

In 2023, about a year after FTX collapsed, Bankman-Fried was found guilty in a trial by jury on four wire fraud-related charges as well as one count each of conspiracy to commit securities, commodities and money laundering charges. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison, which he is currently serving at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

This latest interview, released a day before Bankman-Fried’s 33rd birthday, appears to be part of the Bankman-Fried family’s alleged efforts at seeking clemency for the former crypto poster boy amid a wave of presidential pardons.

Last month, Bankman-Fried spoke with the New York Sun about his rightward political shift in a less-than-subtle attempt to find common ground with President Donald Trump over the issue of political weaponization. 

The crime of others

Bankman-Fried’s latest interview is no less full of political innuendo and comparison, perhaps meant to catch the ear of the sitting president. In one instance, Bankman-Fried argues that while there is “some” crime in crypto today, it pales in comparison to the industry of 10 years ago when “a higher fraction” of transactions were … well … “different people use different words for it…”

“Silk Road,” Bankman-Fried offered. “People purchasing narcotics online, uh, was a common use of crypto back 10 years ago. Obviously there are always going to be criminals in any industry, but over time the fraction of the industry that that represents has fallen off substantially.”

It’s an interesting example, especially considering the famously teetotalling president pardoned Silk Road founder, Ross Ulbricht, in one of his first official acts. What’s one more act of crypto convict clemency, in comparison? 

That doesn’t mean Bankman-Fried isn’t willing to point the finger at others. At one point, Bankman-Fried suggests — once again — that FTX was fully solvent and would have had an incredulous $100 billion in assets against about $15 billion in liabilities today. 

“That's not how things worked out,” he said. “Instead it all got rolled up in a bankruptcy where the assets were dissipated incredibly quickly by those controlling it. They were siphoned off — tens of billions of dollars worth — and it's been a colossal disaster.”

Progressive turn

When Carlson asked why no Democrats had come to his rescue despite the tens of millions in documented donations he made to party members, Bankman-Fried reiterated his claim that he had become persona non grata when it came to light that he was also in Republican pockets “right around FTX’s collapse.”

“I had a relationship probably better with Republicans in DC as with Democrats by that point in time,” he said. “In 2020, I was on the center-left and I gave to Biden's campaign,” he said, referring to Biden’s second-largest campaign contribution. “I was optimistic he'd be a solid center-left president … I was really, really shocked by [the] direction of the administration.” 

One of the radicalizing events here was the “nightmare” of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission under former Chair Gary Gensler. Bankman-Fried offers no new information regarding Gensler’s contradictory request for crypto firms to “register” with non-existent rules but is willing to comment on the regulator’s psychological profile. 

“Power. Everyone likes that. Not everyone. Most people. He's no exception,” Bankman-Fried said. “There are lots of stories about him. being very politically ambitious and feeling like if he could, you know, get on CNBC enough [and] raise his profile, that, you know, maybe he'd be Treasury Secretary.”

It’s worth noting that while still running FTX, Bankman-Fried reportedly worked several different angles to get meetings with Gensler (and other regulators). The least conspiratorial include hiring Ryne Miller as general counsel, who worked with Gensler when he led the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and reportedly brokered a meeting between the two. 

Changing the guard

None of this is to suggest that Bankman-Fried hasn’t legitimately changed his mind about any number of things — like the benefit of reading books — after two years in prison. And it’d be unfair not to note the many ways Bankman-Fried still maintains many of the attributes that rocketed him to business fame in the first place. He’s still apparently committed to the idea of changing the world for the better, still just as much of a nerd who is lost without his laptop and still able to talk extemporaneously on things like the prison economy around muffins and canned fish in oil. 

But given his obvious motivations, it is worth remaining critical of his statements. When Carlson directly asks about the possibility of a pardon, he notes that if it doesn’t happen, he’ll be in his early 50s when released. 

So while Bankman-Fried may be willing to praise the many “good things” the Trump administration said “going into office” and turn his back on politically descended Democrats, it’ll be interesting to hear what he has to say in the coming years. After all, even Bankman-Fried will admit that “changing the guard” may be nigh impossible. 

“Financial regulators [are] big, giant bureaucracies in the federal government,” he said. “They're not used to changing overnight. And they have been playing a really obstructive role for a decade in crypto.”

In either case, this is doubtfully the last the world has heard from SBF.