Sam Bankman-Fried said Friday he was "shocked" at the way his crypto trading empire unraveled this week and hoped the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing of FTX can "find a way" for the crypto exchange to recover.
FTX, Alameda Research and more than 100 other named subsidiaries filed for Chapter 11 protection in Delaware Friday, listing assets and liabilities of between $10 billion and $50 billion. Bankman-Fried, who founded the group, stepped down as CEO with immediate effect, with John J Ray III named as interim boss.
In a series of Tweets that followed the FTX statement, Bankman-Fried said the Chapter 11 filing "doesn't necessarily have to mean the end for the companies or their ability to provide value and funds to their customers chiefly, and can be consistent with other routes"
"Ultimately I'm optimistic that Mr. Ray and others can help provide whatever is best," he added.
"I'm piecing together all of the details, but I was shocked to see things unravel the way they did earlier this week," he said. "I will, soon, write up a more complete post on the play by play, but I want to make sure that I get it right when I do."
Bitcoin prices tumbled back to the lowest levels in nearly two years Friday following news of the Chapter 11 filing, falling 4.6% to change hands at around $16,954.57 each.
The spillover in broader crypto markets continues, as well, with troubled digital lender BlockFi -- which was given $400 million in credit assistance earlier this year by FTX itself -- suspending operations the Securities and Exchange Commission of the Bahamas freezing the assets of FTX subsidiary FTX digital.
Elsewhere, the Mercedes Formula One team, backed by the German automaker Daimler AG, suspended its sponsorship deal with FTX it signed in September of last year.
Officials in Miami-Dade county, where FTX signed a $90 million naming rights deal for the home arena of the NBA's Miami Heat, told Bloomberg Thursday it would look to "all legal remedies" if future payments were to fail.
FTX began to wobble earlier this week following a weekend Tweet from Changpeng Zhao, CEO of its larger rival, Binance, which indicated the Dubai-based exchange would sell the bulk of its $500 million in FTT -- the utility token issued by FTX -- due to what he called "recent revelations that have come to light".
That might have been a reference to an early November report from the crypto-focused news website CoinDesk reported that Alameda Research, another digital asset firm owned by Bankman-Fried, held most of its $14.6 billion in assets in the FTT coin, citing leaked company financials. Group CEO Caroline Ellison disputed the report, noting in a Tweet that "that specific balance sheet is for a subset of our corporate entities, we have > $10b of assets that aren’t reflected there."
Binance then offered a financial rescue of FTX, but quickly rescinded it amid what Zhao described as liquidity issues "beyond our control or ability to help."
