Sam Bankman-Fried, the man at the heart of the latest collapse in cryptocurrencies, has posted yet more perplexing updates.
Until last week, Mr Bankman-Fried was chief executive of FTX, a crypto firm that helped him gain a fortune worth billions of dollars.
But in recent days that company has collapsed, along with his personal wealth. The issues at his company have affected the rest of the cryptocurrency market, which has seen its value plunge in recent days as other crypto bosses have been forced to try and shore up confidence in their own companies.
Since then, he has been largely quiet. But he has begun posting a series of seemingly erratic Twitter updates that purport to address the ongoing issues – while offering little clarity at all.
Last week, Mr Bankman-Fried’s posts had looked to give clarity to customers and investors, many of whom still have money tied up in FTX. In a recent post he had spoken of his “shock” at the collapse of the firm, and promised a full update soon.
“I’m piecing together all of the details, but I was shocked to see things unravel the way they did earlier this week,” he wrote. “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.”
This week, however, his posts have become increasingly puzzling. Beginning late on Sunday, he posted a series of tweets that began as a thread but slowly spelled out the phrase “What HAPPENED”.
He then followed up that tweet with another post that suggested he had told the story of the company, despite not giving any information on what had actually happened at all.
“NOT LEGAL ADVICE. NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE. THIS IS ALL AS I REMEMBER IT, BUT MY MEMORY MIGHT BE FAULTY IN PARTS,” he wrote. It was unclear what information and recollections he was referring to.
Then in a post early on Tuesday morning, Mr Bankman-Fried added another tweet to the thread that suggested he would not in fact be posting any information on what had happened.
“I’ll get to what happened,” he wrote. “But for now, let’s talk about where we are today.”
Some 45 minutes after that was posted, there was no follow-up or indication of what the situation of either FTX or Mr Bankman-Fried personally was.
The flurry of posts led some to speculate that Mr Bankman-Fried was attempting to cover up other tweets that he was deleting, or that his account was under the control of someone else, such as a PR firm. But there is no indication that either was the case.
The company is currently under investigation by a number of authorities, including the police force of the Bahamas, where it is registered and where Mr Bankman-Fried is believed to be living.
