While busy managing Twitter, Elon Musk has still been keeping up with the drama surrounding FTX and its former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF).
The billionaire has written numerous tweets this week signaling his distaste for both SBF, and media outlets covering him uncritically.
- Musk began by ripping into the Wall Street Journal on Monday. The outlet published an opinion piece claiming that FTX ultimately failed “because Sam Bankman-Fried’s supporters lost confidence in him.”
- “Yeah umm … that is definitely not the reason it failed,” replied Musk. He later criticized the publication for giving “foot massages to a criminal” in another article about SBF’s so-called “mission to save the world.”
- FTX filed for bankruptcy on November 11th after the exchange proved incapable of satisfying customer withdrawal requests. Bankman-Fried admitted to facing an $8 billion shortfall on customer deposits.
- Other exchange CEOs, including Coinbase chief Brian Armstrong, said it was likely that SBF rehypothecated customer assets without their permission. On-chain data suggests the exchange’s Bitcoin and Ethereum balances are now near zero.
- Elon Musk later bashed Semafor, a global news platform, for publishing a story claiming FTX owned shares on Twitter. Musk said this was “flat wrong,” and that Semafor no longer “cared about the truth.” He called Business Insider “not a real publication” for sharing the same story.
- Sam Bankman-Fried happens to have invested in Semafor, which Musk considered a major conflict of interest.
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“The very real concern here is that you have been pushing a completely false SBF ownership of Twitter narrative while effectively being his paid shill,” Musk told the news outlet.
- By Wednesday, Musk had taken his criticism to the New York Times. The publication pushed an article praising SBF’s philanthropic donations while failing to mention his bankruptcy and potential exchange fraud.
- In response, Musk said SBF’s overall “gingerly” coverage has been “one the biggest failures in US journalistic integrity of the 21st century.”
- SBF announced on Wednesday that he would speak on a panel with the New York Times on November 30th. Twitter’s crypto community has been indignant over the news, demanding that he be put in prison instead.
Is this really still happening @nytimes?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2022
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