Billionaire Mark Cuban isn’t giving up on crypto, despite the implosion of FTX, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges.
However, Cuban says former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried should be “afraid of going to jail for a long time,” in an interview with TMZ.
“I talked to the guy and thought he was smart,” Cuban told TMZ. “I had no idea he was going to take other people’s money and put it to his personal use.”
Bankman-Fried said on Wednesday he “didn’t ever try to commit fraud” and was “shocked by what happened,” while speaking to CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin at the DealBook Summit. He admitted he “didn’t do a good job” and “completely failed on risk.”
Alameda research, the trading firm founded by Bankman-Fried, was borrowing billions of dollars from FTX users’ accounts and trading those funds without their knowledge, CNBC reports. FTX also drastically underestimated how much money it would need to keep on hand in case a user wanted to cash out.
Regulators require trading platforms to hold enough money to match what customers deposit. And trading customer funds without their explicit consent is illegal, according to U.S. securities law.
Now, Bankman-Fried, along with celebrities like Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady and Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry, have been named in a class-action lawsuit filed on Nov. 15 in Miami.
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