Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) says Sam Bankman-Fried requested him for “a few billion {dollars} nonchalantly, as if he had been asking for a bologna sandwich” in the course of the telephone name that preceded Binance’s try to amass FTX in November 2022, and that he by no means had any intention of going by with it.
“I did not have any curiosity in proudly owning FTX. I additionally wasn’t that curious about serving to SBF,” Zhao writes in his memoir Freedom of Cash, launched Tuesday. “However we could need to step in to guard the customers and the trade.” He signed the non-binding Letter of Intent, he says, purely as a formality: “I used to be specific that we weren’t making any dedication. Our crew would merely assess the numbers after which resolve.”
On the collapse itself, Zhao is obvious about the place it unraveled. When Alameda CEO Caroline Ellison publicly provided to purchase Binance’s FTT holdings at $22 every — an try to stabilize the market — Zhao says she made “a deadly mistake.”
“She had simply revealed her flooring worth,” he writes. Skilled merchants instantly shorted FTT by that stage. The token fell to $15, then $10, then $5. Inside 72 hours, $6 billion had exited FTX.
Zhao additionally discloses the existence of “Alternate Collaboration,” a Sign group arrange by FTX’s Zane Tackett in the course of the Terra/LUNA collapse earlier that 12 months, which included Zhao, Bankman-Fried, Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, Jesse Powell of Kraken and others. The group later attracted scrutiny from DOJ and SEC investigators. “They had been eager to seek out any doable trace of collusion or market manipulation between the exchanges,” Zhao writes. “In fact there was no such factor on this case.”
By Nov. 9, Binance had walked away from the deal. Binance’s personal FTT holdings — value $580 million at their peak — had turn into “principally nugatory,” Zhao writes, echoing the corporate’s $1.6 billion LUNA wipeout six months earlier.
The aftermath introduced a financial institution run on Binance, with $7 billion withdrawn in a single day on Dec. 14. Zhao says he spent that night at dinner with associates. “I used to be not nervous,” he writes. “All person funds had been in our reserves.” Inside a month, he says, customers had deposited all of it again — and extra.
